Published 2026-07-24 · data 2024 · people
One in twenty-five children still die before age five
Global child mortality has plunged — but the remaining burden is not evenly spread.
About one in twenty-five children still dies before their fifth birthday. UN IGME's 2024 estimates put global under-five mortality at roughly 4% — a share that has plunged over recent decades, yet remains far from evenly spread: a child's odds of reaching age five still depend heavily on where they are born.
1 cell = 8.2 million people (0.1% of world population) · 1,000 cells
Context
The figures come from the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), published through its CME Info platform at childmortality.org. Its 2024 estimates put global under-five mortality at roughly 4% — one in twenty-five children — a rounded figure that conveys scale rather than precision.
The headline is progress: about 96 in every 100 children worldwide now survive past age five, a share that has climbed as child mortality has fallen over recent decades. The unfinished business is equity — the remaining deaths are not evenly spread, so the global average masks wide variation between places.
National rates sit far above and below that global figure, and UN IGME publishes country-level estimates through CME Info for anyone who wants to see how a given country compares with the world as a whole.
UN IGME 2024: ~4% under-five mortality globally, rounded.
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