Louisiana’s Children Twice as Likely to Die By Assault

Louisiana Child Death Rate from Assault is More Than Twice the National Average

Download: Louisiana, Is This Who We Want to Be? Child Deaths by Assault

From 1999 to 2019, Louisiana’s child death rate from assault, 4.6 per 100,000, was more than two times the national average of 2.11.

From 1999 to 2019, Louisiana’s child death rate from assault, 4.6 per 100,000, was more than two times the national average of 2.11. For more than twenty years, Louisiana’s children have been twice as likely to die from assault as children among other states.

When you look at the chart below, “Child Deaths by Assault, All States, 1999-2019”, what draws your eye?

Most people quickly spot the tall blue bar on the far right. At 4.6, that bar represents Louisiana’s rate of child deaths by assault.

Louisiana’s bar stands out above all the other bars. Louisiana’s rate of child deaths by assault is 24% higher than the next highest bar which represents Missouri at 3.5.

Louisiana’s bar stands above 2.11, which is the average of all other states. In fact, Louisiana’s crude score of 4.6 is more than twice the national average.

The tall blue bar represents the deaths by assault of Louisiana’s children from birth through 17 years of age from 1999 through 2019. During those two decades, Louisiana’s children were twice as likely to die from assault than were children in all other states combined.

It would be easy to think that perhaps Louisiana’s children had an especially bad year or two in the past. Surely, this rate of death by assault has improved with time.

A reduction would appear as a smaller rate in 2019, the last year for which data about the death of children from assault is available from the US CDC. Improvement would be demonstrated by a smaller number for 2019 than for the 20 year average shown on the previous chart.

The death rate of Louisiana’s children by assault is not declining.

First, notice Louisiana’s rate of child deaths by assault is greater than all other states for which data is available. Second, notice Louisiana’s rate of child deaths by assault at 5.3 during 2019 is greater than Louisiana’s average of 4.6 for the period of 1999 through 2019.
Rather than improving, the rate of child deaths by assault in 2019 is 13.2% greater than Louisiana’s 20-year average.

Source: Dataset for this report of child death by assault rates is public data retrieved from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventions’ Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research (CDC WONDER). CDC Wonder is a public resource which makes many health-related data sets available to CDC staff, public health departments, researchers, and others.

Citation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Case of Death 1999-2019 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2020. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. Accessed at http://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html on Feb 8, 2021 5:50:38PM