Child mortality

Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births)

Official estimate updated 15 May 2024

Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births)

Probability of a child born in a specific year or period dying before reaching the age of five, if subject to age-specific mortality rates of that period. (SDG 3.2.1)

Related publications

Global report Published 21 May 2024

World health statistics 2024: monitoring health for the SDGs, sustainable development goals

Statistical releases

Statistical release 19 May 2022

World Health Statistics 2022

Official WHO statistics for selected health-related SDG indicators and selected Thirteenth General Programme of Work indicators, based on data available in early 2022.

Statistical release 8 December 2020

Number of deaths by cause, age, sex and country, 2019 (Global Health Estimates)

Summary table of mortality estimates by cause, age, sex and country (2019) for WHO Member States.

Title and Description

Name	Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births)
Short name	Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births)
Indicator unique identifier	2322814
Indicator codes	MDG_0000000007
Also known as	SDG indicator 3.2.1 Under 5 mortality rate Under-five mortality rate
SDG Goal	3.2.1 – Under–five mortality rate
Short description	Probability of a child born in a specific year or period dying before reaching the age of five, if subject to age-specific mortality rates of that period. (SDG 3.2.1)
Definition	The probability of a child born in a specific year or period dying before reaching the age of five, if subject to age-specific mortality rates of that period. Under-five mortality rate as defined here is strictly speaking not a rate (i.e. the number of deaths divided by the number of population at risk during a certain period of time) but a probability of death derived from a life table and expressed as rate per 1000 live births.
Direction of progress	Figures decreasing over time demonstrates progress.
Framework classifications	Impact
Indicator status	Actively collected and reported

Publishing and updates

Most recent data update	15 May 2024
Next expected data update	2023
Expected frequency of data release	Annual
Publishing institution	WHO

Data copyright and licensing

Copyright	Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
License	The World Health Organization (“WHO”) encourages public access and use of the data that it collects and publishes on its web site data.who.int. The data are organized in datasets and made available in machine-readable format (“Datasets”). The Datasets have been compiled from data provided by WHO’s Member States under the WHO policy on the use and sharing of data collected by WHO in Member States outside the context of public health emergencies. Use of the data derived from the Datasets, which may appear in formats such as tables and charts, is also subject to these Terms and Conditions. Datasets may include data describing the Dataset called “Metadata”. If any datasets are credited to a source other than WHO, then those materials are not covered by these Terms and Conditions, and permission should be sought from the source provided. You are responsible for determining if this is the case, and if so, you are responsible for obtaining any necessary permission from the sources indicated. The risk of claims resulting from infringement of any third-party-owned component in the materials rests solely with you. You may use our application programming interfaces (“APIs”) to facilitate access to the Datasets, whether through a separate web site or through another type of software application. By using the Datasets or any presentations of data derived from them, or by using our APIs in connection with the Datasets, you agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions, as may be amended from time to time by WHO at its sole discretion. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, these Datasets are provided to you under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), with the additional terms below.  The basic terms applicable to the CC BY 4.0 license may be accessed here. By downloading or using the Datasets, you agree to comply with the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license, as well as the following mandatory and binding addition: Any dispute relating to the interpretation or application of this license shall, unless amicably settled, be subject to conciliation. In the event of failure of the latter, the dispute shall be settled by arbitration. The arbitration shall be conducted in accordance with the modalities to be agreed upon by the parties or, in the absence of agreement, with the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. The parties shall accept the arbitral award as final.
Permission type	Publicly
Prohibited uses	You shall not attempt to de-anonymise the Datasets or use the Datasets in a manner that falsifies or misrepresents their content. You shall not, in connection with your use of the Datasets published on data.who.int, state or imply that WHO endorses, or is affiliated with, you, or that WHO endorses your use of data.who.int, or any content, output, or analysis resulting from or related to the data.who.int, or any entity, organization, company, product or services.
Citation	World Health Organization 2024 data.who.int, Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births) [Indicator]. https://data.who.int/indicators/i/E3CAF2B/2322814 (Accessed on 1 July 2024)
Disclaimers	WHO reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Datasets, or any means of accessing or utilizing the Datasets with or without prior notice to you. Maps The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of WHO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Dotted and dashed lines on maps represent approximate border lines for which there may not yet be full agreement. All references to Kosovo should be understood to be in the context of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999). A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas). The mention of specific companies or of certain manufacturers’ products does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by WHO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. Errors and omissions excepted, the names of proprietary products are distinguished by initial capital letters. All reasonable precautions have been taken by WHO to verify the accuracy of the Datasets. However, the Datasets are being provided without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. You will be solely responsible for your use of the Datasets. In no event shall WHO be liable for any damages arising from such use. For full disclaimers, terms of use and your indemnification of WHO, please visit Terms and conditions.

About the data

Data type	Float
Unit of measure	Probability of dying by age 5 per 1000 births
Value display label	per 1000 live births
Short value display label	per 1k live births
Subject of measure	MORTALITY
Subject of measure sentiment	Negative
Preferred semantic value type	Rate per 1000
Confidence intervals	Yes
Provenance	Official Estimate
Calculation type	Adjusted Predicted
First available data	31 December 1931
Most recent available data	31 December 2020
Data completeness	Complete data
Temporal coverage	1931 - 2020
Periodicity	Annual
Spatial coverage	World
Granularity	National
Population	Children under 5
Number of countries, areas and territories	199
Geographic entities and groups	Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, British Virgin Islands, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czechia, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran (Islamic Republic of), Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands (the), New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, North Macedonia, Norway, occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United Republic of Tanzania, United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Time intervals	1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

Methodology

Method of measurement	For countries with adequate trend of data from civil registration, the calculations of under-five and infant mortality rates are derived from a standard period abridged life table.
Method of estimation aggregates	Global and regional estimates are derived from numbers of estimated deaths and population for age groups 0 year and 1-4 year, aggregated by relevant region.
Process of validation	The United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) conducts an annual country consultation whereby the draft UN IGME estimates, empirical data used to derive the estimates, and notes on methodology are sent to National Statistical Offices and to Ministries of Health or other relevant agencies for review. National Statistical Offices, Ministries of Health or other relevant agencies have the opportunity to provide feedback or comments on estimates and methods, as well as supply additional empirical data during this consultation.
Rationale	Under-five mortality rate measures child survival. It also reflects the social, economic and environmental conditions in which children (and others in society) live, including their health care. Because data on the incidences and prevalence of diseases (morbidity data) frequently are unavailable, mortality rates are often used to identify vulnerable populations.
Denominator	A civil registration system that continuously records all births and deaths in a population is the preferred source of high-quality underlying data on under-five mortality but these systems are not well developed in many low- and middle-income countries. Instead, household surveys and population censuses are the primary sources of underlying data in these countries.
Institutional mandate	The United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), led by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and including members from the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank Group and the United Nations Population Division, was established in 2004 to advance the work on monitoring progress towards the achievement of child survival goals and to augment country capacity to collect high quality data on and produce timely estimates of child mortality. Every year, the UN IGME estimates levels and trends in under-5 mortality at the global, regional and country level and provides an assessment of current progress towards the SDG targets.
Comments	The reliance on multiple data sources, i.e. surveys and census conducted several years apart and producing retrospective time series, can result in disparate mortality rates from different sources, sometimes referring to the same time period. Available data also suffer from sampling and nonsampling errors, including misreporting of age and sex, survivor selection bias, underreporting of child deaths, and recall errors as data are collected retrospectively. Further misclassifications can also impact the accuracy of data, for example early neonatal deaths may be classified as stillbirths. Thus, simply comparing two country data points from different sources and drawing a line between them is not a technically sound way to assess levels and trends. Given varying levels of data quality across different sources, this sort of trend assessment will provide misleading results. Hence, the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) fits a statistical model to these data that takes into account these various data sources to produce annualized estimates. It is important to keep these challenges in mind when looking at available country data and also when discrepancies between country data and the UN IGME estimates are being discussed. The followingpoints are important to highlight: - The UN IGME aims to minimize the errors for each estimate, harmonize trends over time and produce up-to-date and properly assessed estimates of child mortality. Thus, UN IGME estimates are derived from country data. Notably, UN IGME assesses the quality of underlying data sources and adjusts data when necessary. - National estimates may refer to an earlier calendar year than the UN IGME estimates. This is particularly the case where estimates from the most recent national survey are used as the national estimate, since the survey estimates derived from a birth history are retrospective and typically refer to a period before the year of the survey, which may be several years behind the target year for the UN IGME estimates. National estimates may also use a different combination of data sources, or different projection or calculation methods. In the absence of error-free data, there will always be uncertainty around data and estimates. To allow for added comparability, the UN IGME generates estimates with uncertainty bounds. When discussing the UN IGME estimates, it’s important to look at the uncertainty ranges, which might be fairly wide in the case of some countries.

Data sources

Data collection process	For under-five mortality, UNICEF and the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) compile data from all available data sources, including household surveys, censuses, and vital registration data. UNICEF and the UN IGME compile these data whenever they are available publicly and then conduct data quality assessment. UNICEF also collects data through UNICEF country offices by reaching national counterpart(s). The UN IGME also collects vital registration data reported by Ministries of Health or other relevant agencies to WHO.
Preferred data sources	Civil registration with complete coverage is the preferred data source for under-five, infant and neonatal mortality estimation. The calculation of the under-five and infant mortality rates from civil registration data is derived from a standard period abridged life table using available data on the number of deaths and mid-year populations. For civil registration data), initially annual observations were constructed for all observation years in a country.
Other data sources	Household surveys and population census. Most survey data come in one of two forms: the full birth history (FBH), whereby women are asked for the date of birth of each of their children, whether the child is still alive, and if not, the age at death; and the summary birth history (SBH), whereby women are asked only about the number of their children ever born and the number that have died (or equivalently the number still alive).
Expected frequency of data collection	Continuous
Data providers	The National Statistical Office or the Ministry of Health is the typical provider of data for generating under-five mortality estimates at the national level.
Data compilers	The United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), led by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and including members from the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank Group and the United Nations Population Division.

Copyright and Licensing

Copyright	Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
License	The World Health Organization (“WHO”) encourages public access and use of the data that it collects and publishes on its web site data.who.int. The data are organized in datasets and made available in machine-readable format (“Datasets”). The Datasets have been compiled from data provided by WHO’s Member States under the WHO policy on the use and sharing of data collected by WHO in Member States outside the context of public health emergencies. Use of the data derived from the Datasets, which may appear in formats such as tables and charts, is also subject to these Terms and Conditions. Datasets may include data describing the Dataset called “Metadata”. If any datasets are credited to a source other than WHO, then those materials are not covered by these Terms and Conditions, and permission should be sought from the source provided. You are responsible for determining if this is the case, and if so, you are responsible for obtaining any necessary permission from the sources indicated. The risk of claims resulting from infringement of any third-party-owned component in the materials rests solely with you. You may use our application programming interfaces (“APIs”) to facilitate access to the Datasets, whether through a separate web site or through another type of software application. By using the Datasets or any presentations of data derived from them, or by using our APIs in connection with the Datasets, you agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions, as may be amended from time to time by WHO at its sole discretion. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, these Datasets are provided to you under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), with the additional terms below.  The basic terms applicable to the CC BY 4.0 license may be accessed here. By downloading or using the Datasets, you agree to comply with the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license, as well as the following mandatory and binding addition: Any dispute relating to the interpretation or application of this license shall, unless amicably settled, be subject to conciliation. In the event of failure of the latter, the dispute shall be settled by arbitration. The arbitration shall be conducted in accordance with the modalities to be agreed upon by the parties or, in the absence of agreement, with the UNCITRAL Arbitration Rules. The parties shall accept the arbitral award as final.
Permission type	Publicly
Prohibited uses	You shall not attempt to de-anonymise the Datasets or use the Datasets in a manner that falsifies or misrepresents their content. You shall not, in connection with your use of the Datasets published on data.who.int, state or imply that WHO endorses, or is affiliated with, you, or that WHO endorses your use of data.who.int, or any content, output, or analysis resulting from or related to the data.who.int, or any entity, organization, company, product or services.
Citation	World Health Organization 2024 data.who.int, Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births) [Indicator]. https://data.who.int/indicators/i/E3CAF2B/2322814 (Accessed on 1 July 2024)
Disclaimer	WHO reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Datasets, or any means of accessing or utilizing the Datasets with or without prior notice to you. Maps The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of WHO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Dotted and dashed lines on maps represent approximate border lines for which there may not yet be full agreement. All references to Kosovo should be understood to be in the context of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999). A dispute exists between the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland concerning sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas). The mention of specific companies or of certain manufacturers’ products does not imply that they are endorsed or recommended by WHO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. Errors and omissions excepted, the names of proprietary products are distinguished by initial capital letters. All reasonable precautions have been taken by WHO to verify the accuracy of the Datasets. However, the Datasets are being provided without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied. You will be solely responsible for your use of the Datasets. In no event shall WHO be liable for any damages arising from such use. For full disclaimers, terms of use and your indemnification of WHO, please visit Terms and conditions.

Under-five mortality rate (per 1000 live births)