What people die of, and when

In 1950, 41 of every 100 people who died were children under five. In 2023 it was 8, while 50 of every 100 deaths were of people aged 70 or older. The UN's projection puts that at 82 by 2100.

How to read this: each square is 1 of every 100 deaths in that year, grouped by how old the person was — the youngest group first, starting at the bottom left. Each age group has its own shade: the older the group, the stronger the colour. The numbers beside them are the same squares counted. The 2100 picture is hatched because it is a projection, not a count.

The number of deaths rises all the way through — 48.5 million a year to 122.9 million — because there are far more people alive, and everyone dies once. What changes is the age at which it happens.

Around 1800, 43 of every 100 children died before their fifth birthday — everywhere in the world. In 2023 it was 3.6, about one in twenty-eight. It is the largest change anywhere on this site.

died before five   reached five

How to read this: 100 babies born in that year. The strong squares are the ones who did not reach their fifth birthday, counted from the bottom left; the pale ones did. Hatched squares are a projection.

How to read this: one column per year, 1950 to 2100. The taller the column, the bigger the share of babies who died before five. Hatched columns are the UN's projection, not a count.

The 1800 figure is a reconstruction — most of the world's births were not registered then — so it is kept apart from the yearly series, which starts where the UN's own count does. And 3.6 in every 100 is an average of very different places: country by country the gap is more than twentyfold.

In 2023, about 4.8 million children died before their fifth birthday. 58 of every 100 of them were in just ten countries.

1. Nigeria770,295
2. India642,621
3. Pakistan405,342
4. Democratic Republic of the Congo311,062
5. Ethiopia180,614
6. Niger122,738
7. Bangladesh95,669
8. Indonesia92,580
9. Tanzania89,856
10. Angola87,429

How to read this: the ten countries where the most children died before five in 2023, bars on one scale. Big countries are here partly because many babies are born there.

A fairer comparison is the chance. In Niger, 11.6 of every 100 babies did not reach five; in Hong Kong, 0.2. Here are the 132.1 million babies born in 2023, as 100, sorted by the chance where they were born:

• fewer than 1 of 100 die before five: 18 babies (93 countries)
• 1 to 2½ of 100 die before five: 19 babies (73 countries)
• 2½ to 5 of 100 die before five: 36 babies (41 countries)
• 5 to 10 of 100 die before five: 20 babies (26 countries)
• 10 or more of 100 die before five: 7 babies (3 countries)

How to read this: the 100 squares are the babies born in the world in 2023. Each is coloured by how many of every 100 children die before five in the country where it was born; the stronger the colour, the more.

Across the world in 2023, a girl could expect to live 75.9 years and a boy 70.5: 5.4 years apart. In every one of the 236 countries, women live longer.

• women live less than 2 years longer: 6 countries
• women live 2 to 4 years longer: 45 countries
• women live 4 to 6 years longer: 115 countries
• women live 6 to 8 years longer: 50 countries
• women live 8 years or more longer: 20 countries

How to read this: each square is a country. The stronger the colour, the more years longer women live than men there.

The widest gaps are in Ukraine (13.3 years), Palestine (11.8 years), Russia (11.7 years); the narrowest in Togo (0.4). These are averages for everyone born into that year's death rates, not a promise about any one person.

The picture above gathers about ninety causes written on death certificates into 22 groups. Here is what each one means, largest first, with its count among the 4,854,683 deaths in the European Union in 2023.

Other cancers and tumours

Every other cancer (bowel, breast, pancreas, prostate, blood and more) and some growths that are not cancer. In 2023: 980,779 deaths, 20 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 75 or older.

Other heart and blood-vessel diseases

The heart beating wrongly or failing to pump, high blood pressure, and diseases of the blood vessels. In 2023: 757,500 deaths, 16 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 85 or older.

Heart attacks and blocked heart arteries

The blood vessels that feed the heart become blocked, so part of the heart muscle is starved of blood. In 2023: 510,133 deaths, 11 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 80 or older.

Breathing diseases

Pneumonia, flu, and long-lasting lung diseases such as COPD, where breathing gets harder over years. In 2023: 380,733 deaths, 8 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 80 or older.

Strokes

A blood vessel in the brain is blocked or bursts, and the brain cells around it die. In 2023: 325,815 deaths, 7 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 80 or older.

Dementia and Alzheimer's

The brain slowly losing memory and the ability to look after oneself; Alzheimer's is the most common kind. In 2023: 260,897 deaths, 5 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 85 or older.

No clear cause recorded

The death certificate names signs such as old age or a heart that stopped, but no disease behind them. In 2023: 238,863 deaths, 5 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 80 or older.

Lung cancer

Cancer that starts in the lungs or the windpipe. Most of it is caused by smoking. In 2023: 230,276 deaths, 5 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 70 or older.

Other illnesses

Every other illness: of the nerves, the blood, the skin, the bones and muscles, the mind, and the rest. In 2023: 218,443 deaths, 5 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 75 or older.

Liver, stomach and gut diseases

Diseases of the liver (many from drinking), the stomach and the bowels. In 2023: 213,350 deaths, 4 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 75 or older.

Diabetes and hormone diseases

Diabetes above all, and other diseases of the glands that make hormones. In 2023: 170,541 deaths, 4 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 80 or older.

Kidney and bladder diseases

The kidneys stop cleaning the blood, and infections and diseases of the bladder. In 2023: 116,990 deaths, 2 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 85 or older.

COVID-19

Deaths where COVID-19 is written as the cause. Counted from 2020. In 2023: 101,072 deaths, 2 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 85 or older.

Infections

Illnesses caught from germs that are not counted elsewhere: blood poisoning (sepsis), tuberculosis, HIV and others. In 2023: 89,973 deaths, 2 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 80 or older.

Other injuries and accidents

Every other injury: fires, choking, animals, harm from medical care and more. In 2023: 81,740 deaths, 2 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 80 or older.

Falls

Falls on stairs, from beds, or on the same level. Most people who die this way are very old. In 2023: 69,471 deaths, 1 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 85 or older.

Suicide

People who took their own life. In 2023: 48,754 deaths, 1 of every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 55 or older.

Road and transport accidents

Anyone killed in traffic (walking, cycling, riding or driving) and other transport accidents. In 2023: 23,253 deaths, fewer than 1 in every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 50 or older.

Problems around birth and birth defects

Babies born too early or too small, problems during birth, and bodies that formed differently before birth. In 2023: 17,080 deaths, fewer than 1 in every 100 in the EU. At least half of them were babies under one.

Poisoning, including overdoses

Poisoning by accident, including overdoses of drugs and medicines and too much alcohol at once. In 2023: 11,054 deaths, fewer than 1 in every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 50 or older.

Drowning

Drowning in the sea, lakes, rivers, pools and baths. In 2023: 4,966 deaths, fewer than 1 in every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 55 or older.

Killed by another person

People killed by someone else on purpose. In 2023: 3,000 deaths, fewer than 1 in every 100 in the EU. Half of them were 40 or older.

"Half of them were 80 or older" means that of everyone who died of it, at least half were 80 or older when they died.

The UN counts 58.4 million deaths worldwide in 2019 and 69.7 million in 2021: 11.4 million more people died in that one year than in the last year before the pandemic.

deaths the UN counts   The Economist's estimate of extra deaths, with its range   deaths in 2019

How to read this: the wide solid columns are all the deaths the UN counts in each year, 2012 to 2023, and the dashed line is the 2019 level. The narrow hatched columns beside 2020–2023 are a different kind of number: The Economist's estimate of how many more people died than would have without the pandemic, with a thin bar showing how uncertain that estimate is. Counts and estimates are never drawn the same way here.

By 2024-06-17 that model put the world's extra deaths at 27.3 million, and could narrow it no further than 19.2 million to 36.3 million. About 7 million COVID-19 deaths were reported to the World Health Organization over the same period. That gap is the honest shape of this event: in much of the world a death is never registered with a cause.

Deaths certified as COVID-19 in the European Union

1. 2020439,313
2. 2021568,236
3. 2022312,048
4. 2023101,072

How to read this: one row per year, one square per 10,000 deaths, from the death certificates of the EU's 27 countries. The worst year was 2021, with 568,236 deaths. These are counted one by one, which is why they can be drawn as squares.

This site carries no advertising, so a licence that allows only non-commercial use is no bar here, and several such sources are drawn and credited elsewhere on the site. Three things a reader reasonably expects on this page are still missing, for reasons that are not about advertising, and it is better to say so than to leave the gaps unexplained.

• What people die of in the world as a whole, by age. The World Health Organization's Global Health Estimates may be drawn and credited but never reprinted as a table — that is the condition it comes with — and the picture on this page is a table, age by age. The home page draws its world figures as a picture, which that condition allows. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Global Burden of Disease is published on terms that bar redrawing it at all. Both are free to read at the source.
• Deaths in pregnancy and childbirth, over time. The world's current figure is on the home page. A long series is not drawn: the only one we have mixes in a WHO series that has not been cleared for use here.
• Causes of death outside the European Union. National statistics offices publish them, and the EU's do so under a licence that lets the whole table be reprinted — which is why the picture above is Europe. It covers 27 countries and about 5 million deaths a year, not the world's 62 million.

What is here instead: every death the UN counts, by age, for the whole world and every country — and, for causes, the deaths Europe certifies one by one.

Deaths by age and the child-mortality series are the United Nations' own estimates. The causes are the European Union's registered deaths as published by Eurostat (that dataset was last updated 2026-07-29; we fetched it on 2026-09-17). The pandemic estimate is The Economist's model, whose code and data are published under the MIT licence. The years in good health are the World Health Organization's Global Health Estimates, drawn and credited under WHO's terms, which allow no table.

Sources: UN WPP 2024 · Gapminder · Eurostat · The Economist · WHO GHO. Every source, its licence and how to cite it →

counted   projected or modelled

Verified 2026-09-30 · 73 canaries