Child Mortality (under 5) by Country — Every Decade Since 1800

Every statistic here represents the quietest of tragedies: a life unlived before its fifth year. Behind the raw digits lies the profound fragility of infancy, a reality that dictates the contours of family life across the globe. As of the 2020s, the spectrum of risk is wide, ranging from 1.9 per 1,000 births in Finland to 113.8 per 1,000 births in Nigeria across 157 countries. These numbers define the reach of medicine, nutrition, and infrastructure, shaping the early years of the most vulnerable.

The historical arc of these numbers reveals a transformation in the human story. Once, the loss of a child was a common expectation; today, it is a rare catastrophe in much of the world. While top-ranking nations like Finland, Norway, and Singapore have reached rates as low as 1.9 to 2.2 per 1,000 births, others remain in a state of crisis. Tracking these figures decade by decade allows us to observe the shifting tides of survival and the uneven impact of global progress.

Where you are born creates a set of probabilities that stay with a person for a lifetime. The gap between the median—16 per 1,000 births in Costa Rica—and those at the bottom, such as Nigeria at 113.8, illustrates persistent inequalities. A child born in a region where the rate is 75 per 1,000 births, as is the case in Sierra Leone, Somalia, or South Sudan, navigates a different reality than one born in Spain or South Korea.

Discover where you rank among everyone ever born to compute your own parallel lives on MYRIAD.