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As this chart shows, two centuries ago, about one in three children in Sweden died before they were five years old.

Since then, the child mortality rate in Sweden has declined to 0.3%.

South Korea achieved a similar reduction much faster. This is often the case: the first countries to improve living conditions usually needed much longer than some of those countries catching up later — the latter can learn from what worked elsewhere.

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In 1990, one in four newborns in Malawi died before their fifth birthday.

At that time, the average number of births per woman was almost seven. This meant that many families experienced the tragedy of losing a child.

But in recent decades, Malawi has made incredible progress. As you can see in the chart, the child mortality rate has dropped to 1 in 25 children — an 84% reduction.

Many factors have contributed to this decline. The expansion of antenatal care and the attendance of skilled health professionals at birth have been crucial in saving newborns in the earliest days of life. Increasing vaccination rates, distributing insecticide-treated bed nets and antimalarials, and programs to stop the transmission of HIV have all reduced the risks of dying in infancy.

Read more about the role that vaccines have played in reducing child mortality →

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In the early 1980s, Nepal’s children suffered from some of the highest death rates from pneumonia in the world, with over 1,400 deaths for every 100,000 children under five. That meant around 39,000 children died from pneumonia each year, more than from any other cause.

Since then, Nepal has made huge progress. The death rate has fallen almost 20-fold. This improvement is due to various measures, including pneumococcal and Hib vaccines, better access to healthcare and antibiotics, and improved nutrition.

Despite this progress, pneumonia is still among the leading causes of death in children in Nepal. And we know that more progress can be made: high-income countries have achieved much lower rates, with fewer than 5 per 100,000.

Explore how deaths from pneumonia among children have changed in other countries →

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Losing a child is one of the worst things that can happen to a parent.

Imagine living in a world where there was a one-in-three chance your child would die. This wasn't just the reality for your children; it could just as well happen to your siblings, friends, or neighbors.

Such a world seems unimaginable today, but it wasn’t too far from reality two centuries ago, even in some economically advanced countries.

The chart shows the share of newborns who died before age five in the Netherlands since 1840. These historical estimates are more uncertain than recent data, but it's likely that before the 1870s, about one-in-three newborns died. Each birth carried odds no parent today could contemplate facing.

But a huge amount of progress has been made since then. Today, one in 250 Dutch children dies. This progress was driven by many factors, including improvements in nutrition, access to clean water, sanitation, vaccines, and reductions in poverty.

To learn more, read my colleague Hannah’s recent article: “Children in rich countries are much less likely to die than a few decades ago, but we rarely hear about this progress” →

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In 2021, malaria was the leading cause of death among children under five in more than 20 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In Nigeria, over 125,000 young children died from it — that’s 340 every day, one child around every four minutes. The country accounts for one-third of all under‑5 malaria deaths in the world.

Malaria is both preventable and treatable. But millions of children still lack access to basic protection: bed nets, timely treatment, and safe living conditions. We’ve seen malaria eliminated elsewhere.

The tools exist; the challenge is getting them to those who need them most.

Read more from my colleague Max Roser on why progress is possible — and how each of us can contribute →

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There are few experiences, if any, that are more painful for a parent than losing a child.

In the past, child deaths were much more common than they are today. But even when these deaths were not unusual, historical diary entries show us that most parents still found them heartbreaking.

Unfortunately, in many countries today, a large share of parents still experience the loss of a child. The map here shows the share of mothers who lost a child before they reached the age of five.

In most of Europe and North America, this share is less than 1%. But in some of the world’s poorest countries — like Cameroon, Nigeria, and the Central African Republic — more than one in three mothers have experienced this tragedy.

These figures come from a research article by Emily Smith-Greenaway and colleagues, based on reported or estimated data from 2010 to 2018 for mothers aged 20 to 44.

Read my colleague Max Roser’s article for more historical context around this data →

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Child mortality in Asia has fallen sharply. The chart shows nine countries that have reduced child mortality rates by more than half since 2000. This means millions more children surviving through the crucial early years of life.

In India, for example, child mortality fell from 9% to 3%. China saw a similar decrease from 4% to just 1%. Key reasons for these gains include improved nutrition, clean water, sanitation, vaccinations, and poverty reduction.

However, even with these improvements, rates of 1–6% still reflect hundreds of thousands of young lives lost each year in these countries.

This is a story of remarkable progress — but one that’s not yet finished.

Explore child mortality data for more countries →

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Child mortality rates in China have fallen from more than 20% in 1950 to less than 1% today.

But this steady progress was interrupted in the late 1950s during the “Great Leap Forward”. This was China’s national plan to industrialize rapidly, but it resulted in widespread famine and economic turmoil.

As the chart shows, child mortality rates spiked in China over this period. This change was so dramatic that it is also clearly visible in the global trend. This data comes from the UN’s World Population Prospects.

Explore this data →

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Skilled health staff can reduce the risk of mothers and infants dying during childbirth.

In most countries, almost all births are now attended by trained health professionals. But as you can see on the map, this is the case for less than half of births in some of the world’s poorest countries.

This is based on data from Demographic and Health Surveys and UNICEF. Note that this doesn’t mean births in these countries aren’t attended by any skilled staff; it simply measures staff with professional medical training.

Improving access to essential healthcare and services could help reduce maternal and infant mortality rates.

Explore the data →

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Infancy used to be an extremely dangerous time of life.

As the chart shows, around 20% of girls in Sweden died before their first birthday in the 18th century. This was higher than the risk among 80-year-olds — at that age, 10% to 20% died each year.

Since then, the risk of dying has reduced across all ages, but the reduction has been most profound for infants. Rates have fallen 100-fold.

This progress has come from improvements in hygiene, clean water and sanitation, vaccination, nutrition, neonatal healthcare, and surgery.

The data comes from the Human Mortality Database and the United Nations World Population Prospects. I’ve shown data from Sweden, which has the longest historical records, stretching back to the 1750s.

Explore the same data for many more countries →

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The world has made progress against the tragedy of infant mortality. But infants remain at risk, especially after birth.

The experience of a baby leaving the womb and entering the world is a sudden change, and birth complications, suffocation, trauma, and sepsis can be fatal.

The chart shows the risks over the first year of life. It uses national data from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to show the daily death rate (on the vertical axis), plotted against the baby’s age in days (on the horizontal axis).

As you can see, the first day of life is the riskiest. Risks then decline sharply in the days following birth and continue to decline gradually over the rest of the year. This pattern is seen across countries.

Read more about how mortality risks change over our lifetimes →

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This chart shows death rates across the first year of a baby’s life and how they have been reduced over time.

The data spans 1921 to 2021 and comes from the Office for National Statistics in England & Wales.

On the left-hand side of the chart, you can see that death rates are much higher on the first day of life. They then drop sharply over the following days and continue declining gradually over the rest of the year.

But you can also see that over decades, the entire curve has shifted downwards. This means that every day of infancy is safer than in the past.

Read more about the decline in child mortality →

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The world has made great progress against child mortality. But in many countries, a significant share still die during childhood.

The data on this map comes from the UN IGME, which estimates child mortality rates worldwide using detailed household surveys and vital statistics.

As the map shows, child mortality is much lower in rich countries, where fewer than 1% of children die before the age of five.

However, the figures are much higher in poor countries, especially across Africa and South Asia. In Pakistan, for example, 6% die before their fifth birthday. In Nigeria and Somalia, the figure is 11%.

These statistics show that despite impressive falls in child mortality, much more progress can be made.

Child mortality: an everyday tragedy of enormous scale that we can make progress against

We live in a world in which ten children die every minute.

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The deaths of children are daily tragedies on an enormous scale. The UN estimates that between 1950 and 2021, 970 million children died. That’s almost a billion children who died in only 70 years.

The chart shows that the world has made progress. 22% of the children born in 1950 died before they were five years old. Since then, the global child mortality rate has declined to 3.7%.

In absolute terms, the number of child deaths has also declined: in 1950, 20 million children died; by the year 2000, this number had halved; and since then, it has halved again.

But the deaths of millions of young children every year remain one of the worst problems in the world and deserve much more attention.

Explore this data →