What could be more tragic than the death of a young child? Child mortality, the death of children under the age of five, is still extremely common in our world today.
The historical data makes clear that it doesn’t have to be this way: it is possible for societies to protect their children and reduce child mortality to very low rates. For child mortality to reach low levels, many things have to go right at the same time: good healthcare, good nutrition, clean water and sanitation, maternal health, and high living standards. We can, therefore, think of child mortality as a proxy indicator of a country’s living conditions.
The chart shows our long-run data on child mortality, which allows you to see how child mortality has changed in countries around the world.
Since the 1700s, child mortality rates have plummeted from 30-40% to just 1-2% in 2022 for developed countries.
Globally, 4.4% of all children die before they are 15 years old. This is the data for 2021, the latest available year.
This is still too many deaths.
Nonetheless, countries in the EU have reduced their child mortality rate to just 0.47%. Children born in the EU have the highest chances of survival. It would be great if every child in the world could just be as secure as a child in the EU. This would reduce global death toll from 5.9 million to 0.6 million.
Causes of mortality in children in the more developed countries often result from cancers like leukemia and brain tumors. It is a sad tragedy for a parent to bury their child. If only our medical science could cure such diseases, the world would be a much better place.
Max Roser (2022) – “The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: ‘https://ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-better’ [Online Resource]
“Data Page: Under-five mortality rate”, part of the following publication: Saloni Dattani, Fiona Spooner, Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser (2023) – “Child and Infant Mortality”. Data adapted from United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, Gapminder, Various sources. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality [online resource]