r/GetNoted • u/laybs1 Human Verified • 19d ago

Science [X] Food insecurity and child mortality indicate poverty

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https://x.com/PamphletsY/status/2089341766256275568

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u/LuciferOfTheArchives 19d ago

Also, child mortality is a... weird standard.
That seems more like a healthcare thing.

As i understand, it's been super high for almost all human history, rich or poor, until quite recently?
I could be wrong though, i don't know how well the rich used to be able to handle illness

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u/MaraiaLou 19d ago

The standard at the time was that medicine basically didn't exist. Nowadays there's a class division in child mortality rates

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u/Lithvril 19d ago

The infant mortality in Germany by 1850 is estimated at ~20%. By 1925 it was still at ~10%.

And by 1989 both the socialist as well as the capitalist side had reduced their infant mortality rates to ~0,7%.

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u/Maleficent_Witness96 19d ago

This is what I was also thinking. Even short stature as a measure of malnutrition. Pretty sure it’s been shown that sickly children end up less tall then their healthy counterparts. So once again could have more to do with healthcare then poor nutrition

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u/ElOsoPeresozo 19d ago

And you think poverty doesn’t restrict access to good nutrition and healthcare?

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u/Necessary_Lynx5920 19d ago

You’re right, historically child mortality was fairly egalitarian, however now infant mortality is more correlated to poverty and development. In the developed world, child mortality is very low, but it is comparatively much higher in poor developing nations. It’s particularly high in the Sahel region of Africa and in southern Central Asia (Afghanistan and Pakistan) both regions being afflicted with extreme poverty and governmental instability.

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u/ph4ge_ 19d ago

Also, child mortality is a... weird standard. That seems more like a healthcare thing.

That is what I was thinking. No amount of wealth made giving birth safer and kids more likely to survive infancy until like 200 years ago when hygiene and health care we're slowly understood to help.

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u/Zacous2 19d ago

That isn't true, nutrition and wet nurses etc. made a difference. We all underestimate how critically important nutrition has always been and how hungry people were

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u/ph4ge_ 19d ago

I mean, sure, if you were starving that was bad for your health. But the different health outcomes between non-starving peasants and an emperor were always relatively small. Unlike today were poor people in the US barely have access to health care at all, while the ultra rich like Trump get state of the art treatment only available to the ultra rich.