No. At the Republican midterm convention in Dallas on September 10, 2026, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the U.S. has “the sickest children in the history of the world.” PolitiFact rated that claim False.
For most of human history, about half of children died before puberty, largely from infectious disease. U.S. childhood mortality fell dramatically after sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics — for example, from roughly 1 in 5 children dying before age 5 in 1900 to far lower rates today. Some chronic conditions have risen in recent decades, and U.S. child and teen mortality still exceeds peer rich countries, but that does not make today’s American children the sickest in world history.
Source: PolitiFact — RFK Jr.’s claim that the US has the ‘sickest children’ in world history is wrong