After several years of marked improvements, the District’s infant mortality rate of 6.6 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2013 is the lowest it has ever been. In 2010, for example, it was 8 deaths per 1,000 live births. And the city has come a very long way from the terrible peak of 23.1 in 1989.

But the disparities between the richest and poorest wards masks the toll that poverty is taking on children’s survival in some parts of the nation’s capital.

An infant born in 2012 in D.C.’s upper Northwest quadrant, Ward 3, was ten times less likely to die before its first birthday than one born east of the river in Ward 8, according to a report released Monday by the international nonprofit Save the Children.

In 2012, the last year when neighborhood data was available, Ward 8 had an infant mortality rate of 14.9; Ward 3’s was just 1.2. And across the city, the racial disparity is stark: the infant mortality rate for white babies in 2012 was 3.4 deaths per 1,000 live births, in comparison to 12.3 for black babies and 5.1 for Hispanic babies.

Courtesy D.C. Department of Health.

Even the 2013 citywide average rate of 6.6 deaths per 1,000 live births still puts D.C. last among the world’s 25 wealthiest capital cities, according to Save the Children. A baby born in Prague or Stockholm—where the rate is less than 2 deaths per 1,000 births—is more than three times less likely to die within its first year of life.

Courtesy Save the Children.