US Neonatal Death and Stillbirth Ratios for 282 Monthly Cohorts (1995-2018)

Vital statistics for 282 monthly conception cohorts of Non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and White (NHW) singleton infants born in the US from 1995 through 2018. Developed by Emtiaz Hossain Hritan, the data tracks neonatal death rates and stillbirth sex ratios to evaluate the selection in utero argument. It specifically focuses on extremely preterm birth (ePTB) infants to address the Black male neonatal death paradox.

Use Cases

• Time-series modeling of the 'sex ratio of NHB stillbirths' using Box-Jenkins methods
• Evaluating the 'NHB share of burden' variable to compare neonatal death rates between NHB and NHW populations
• Investigating the 'selection in utero' hypothesis within extremely preterm birth (ePTB) cohorts

Strengths

• 282 monthly conception cohorts
• 23-year longitudinal coverage (1995-2018)
• Corrects for inflated denominators using a specific NHB share of burden variable

Limitations

• Geographic bias limited to the United States
• Focuses exclusively on singleton ePTB infants, excluding multiple births or full-term infants
• Relies on historical vital statistics which may have reporting variations over two decades

Provenance

Source

Harvard Dataverse

Collection Method

Retrieval and processing of US vital statistics

Time Range

1995-2018

Freshness

Last updated March 2026; covers data up to 2018.

Geography

United States