Richer countries don’t just avoid infectious disease — they also have lower rates of chronic disease deaths

One of humanity’s biggest victories has been the fight against infectious diseases. This battle has led to plummeting rates of child and maternal mortality and dramatically increased life expectancy.

However, there are still large differences in infectious disease rates between different parts of the world. As we might expect, deaths are much less common in high-income countries where almost everyone can access clean water, sanitation, and medication.

One common misconception is that this prosperity has come at the cost of an increase in death rates from chronic diseases, such as heart disease and cancers (collectively called “non-communicable diseases”). But this is not the case. As you can see in the chart, death rates from these diseases are also lower in richer countries. It’s not the case that we’ve simply substituted one health problem for another.

That means that the risk of someone of a given age dying from any cause each year tends to decrease as countries get richer.

Explore more of our data on causes of death across the world →

Where this page came from

This page was imported from Our World in Data. “Richer countries don’t just avoid infectious disease — they also have lower rates of chronic disease deaths” by Hannah Ritchie, 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.

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