PT3.S2.Q17 - A society's infant mortality rate

moonstars5678

Originally got this question wrong (picked E), but I think I understand why C is right - could someone confirm my thinking?

Stim:
P: Infant death rates have declined historically
C: But that doesn't necessarily mean the babies currently born are actually healthier now.

Hm, why is that? Is it that they are more likely to live but are still really weak when they're born?

ACs:
A - We're not focused on the rates for infant mortality. The stim already addresses some localities where the rates have increased.

B - This explains why 51%+ of the infants who are already part of that mortality rate died, but doesn't explain why the infants who survived aren't necessarily healthier.

C - Originally I eliminated this AC because I misunderstood the stimulus when it came to "infant mortality" and what actually meant to be part of that rate. But if the US is developing awesome tech that is able to keep babies alive, then that explains why babies are dying are lower rates - we're able to save them better, but nothing's really changed in their unhealthy state during birth.

D - Again, not focused on infant mortality rates

E - Originally picked this one because C just didn't click for me, so I tried to justify that E introduced some sort of alternative cause as to why they're not as healthy. But this has one huge issue: The stim is talking about babies at BIRTH and this AC is talking about babies who grow into toddlers, young kids, etc.

help

LivinLaVidaLSAT

Your reasoning for answer C sounds good to me. I have a different reason for eliminating answer E but along the same lines. I don't think we can assume how old these babies grow up to be like we can't assume this answer is about babies at birth.

Stimulus:
I didn’t think of this as an argument. I saw conflicting claims and thought of it as a paradox. The 2 conflicting claims/ideas:
1. There’s a decline in the overall infant mortality rate (an indication of health)
2. U.S. babies at birth aren’t necessarily healthier now than in the past.

We’re asked which answer most strongly supports claim 2. There is a subtle term shift, “infants” vs. “babies at birth.” I didn’t think about it until I started looking at the answer choices. Since the stimulus is all about numbers, I was looking for an answer that involved numbers and babies at birth.

Answers:
A: no, is about infant mortality in the localities (not U.S. overall); plus, we’re pretty much told this in the 2nd sentence of stimulus

B: no, doesn’t tell me how many were babies at birth and is about cause of death

C: yes, supports claim 2 and resolves the paradox; the U.S. is now better at saving unhealthy babies than before

D: no, this is about infants and eleven states is way less than half of the U.S. so this statistic is not helpful

E: no, sounds a little random; doesn’t specify this is about the U.S. nor babies at birth (could have been born healthy); we don’t know how many babies this affects

moonstars5678

@LivinLaVidaLSAT Thank you so much! That's a good point for E - we really don't even know the scope of this AC.

dpgold24

Adding my thinking here since I choose AC A on first pass & BR. I think the Q stem was tricky, at first i approach as MSS before realizing it wasn't.

Stim:
-IMR is accepted health indicator
-overall rate is decreasing in US
-decline doesn't show that on average babies are healthier

Anticipated: Need an AC that shows why the rate is declining but babies are on average healthier. At first I thought maybe this would be that one locality is tanking the rate for the country, but could also be something else, like new med practice or tech, that explains it.

A: This is a too broad way of saying some localities may be outliers. Didn't fully eliminate, but this is not a stand alone AC.
B: Irrelevant, doesn't help explain
C: Yes - this shows that babies are healthier on average, but because we are saving more babies (who have ore health complications) that rate looks like it's going down. We are expanding the sample size of babies to include the most unhealthy.
D : irelevant
E: irelevant