Infant mortality in the U.S. fell to an all-time low in 2025 thanks to antibody shots and RSV vaccines

Infant mortality in the U.S. dropped to a new all-time low in 2025, according to preliminary government data. There were slightly fewer than 5.4 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While that appears to be a small decline from about 5.5 in 2024 and 5.6 in the two years preceding, researchers say it is statistically meaningful and translates to hundreds of fewer infant deaths per year. It’s difficult to pinpoint what’s driving the recent developments, but “this is an encouraging data point, and we hope that this trend will continue,” said Dr. Michael Warren, chief medical and health officer for the March of Dimes. Infant mortality is the measure of how many babies die before reaching their first birthday. Because the number of babies born in the U.S. varies year to year, researchers calculate rates to compare infant mortality over time. The overall numbers, too, have been going down. U.S. infant deaths fell to about 19,350 last year, according to provisional CDC data that may rise a little as additional analysis is completed. The final tally is still expected to be down from about 20,050 in 2024 and about 20,160 in 2023, according to the agency. The U.S. rate has inched down over the decades — it was at 7.5 per 1,000 three decades ago — thanks to medical advances and public health efforts. But it has remained worse than other high-income countries, which experts have attributed to poverty, inadequate prenatal care and other problems. A study published last year found the U.S. infant mortality rate in 2022 — when the rate rose — was nearly twice as high as what was seen in several other high-income democratic nations, including Italy, Japan, Spain and Sweden. That was the year of the first statistically significant jump in the U.S. rate in about two decades. Experts attributed that rise to a rebound in RSV and flu infections. In 2023, U.S. health officials began recommending two new meas