Almost one billion children have died globally since 1950

The deaths of children are daily tragedies on an enormous scale. The UN estimates that between 1950 and 2024, 990 million children died. That’s almost a billion children who died in only 75 years.

The chart shows that the world has made progress. In 1950, 23% of children born died before they were five years old. Since then, the global child mortality rate has declined to 3.6%.

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.

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Almost one billion children have died globally since 1950” by Max Roser, Edouard Mathieu, published by Our World in Data under CC BY 4.0. Changed here: set as a page, its interactive charts shown as pictures. Data from third parties keeps its own licence.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.