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 2021, 970 million children died. That’s almost a billion children who died in only 60 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 the interactive data here.