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Number of child deaths per woman

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Child & Infant Mortality

What you should know about this indicator

The United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) was formed in 2004 to share data on child mortality, improve methods for child mortality estimation, report on progress towards child survival goals, and enhance country capacity to produce timely and properly assessed estimates of child mortality. The UN IGME is led by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and includes the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Bank Group and the United Nations Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs as full members.

UN IGME’s independent Technical Advisory Group (TAG), comprised of leading academic scholars and independent experts in demography and biostatistics, provides guidance on estimation methods, technical issues, and strategies for data analysis and data quality assessment.

UN IGME updates its child mortality estimates annually after reviewing newly available data and assessing data quality. The web portal contains the latest UN IGME estimates of child mortality at the country, regional and global levels, and the data used to derive them.

Details on the methods used to estimate child mortality are available here: https://childmortality.org/methods.

Number of child deaths per woman
The fertility rate (average number of children per woman) multiplied by the under-five mortality rate (probability of dying before age five).
Source
United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (2023); Gapminder (2015); United Nations - World Population Prospects (2022); Gapminder (2017) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
September 22, 2023
Date range
1800–2021
Unit
under-five deaths per woman
Links
https://childmortality.org/data

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (2023)

Data published by

United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), Levels & Trends in Child Mortality: Report 2022, Estimates developed by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, United Nations Children’s Fund, New York, 2023.

Retrieved on
August 16, 2023
Retrieved from
https://childmortality.org/data

Estimates of child mortality rate (under five years old) per 1,000 live births. This data has been compiled by Klara Johansson and Mattias Lindgren (Gapminder) from a selection of sources:

  • Human Mortality Database
  • Child Mortality Estimates from the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
  • Gapminder model based on infant mortality ratio (version 2) https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd002/
  • Model estimates based on Gapminder's life expectancy data combined with model life tables, with some additional adjustments
Retrieved on
September 18, 2023
Retrieved from
https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd005/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Compiled and documented by Klara Johansson and Mattias Lindgren from Gapminder from many sources including: Human Mortality Database; UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation; Gapminder models based on life expectancy; Gapminder models based on infant mortality rates.

World Population Prospects 2022 is the 27th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. More details at https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/.

Retrieved on
September 9, 2022
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022). World Population Prospects 2022, Online Edition.

Sources:

— 1800 to 1950 (and in some cases also years after 1950): Gapminder v6 which were compiled and documented by Mattias Lindgren, see previous versions further down on this page.

— 1950 to 2014: In most cases we use the latest UN estimates from World Population Prospects 2017 published in the file with Annually interpolated demographic indicators, called WPP2017_INT_F01_ANNUAL_DEMOGRAPHIC_INDICATORS.xlsx , accessed on September 2, 2017.

— 2015 – 2099: We use the UN forecast of future fertility rate in all countries, called median fertility variant.

Retrieved on
September 22, 2023
Retrieved from
https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd008/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Free data from www.gapminder.org

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Number of child deaths per woman”. Our World in Data (2024). Data adapted from Gapminder, United Nations. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-died-before-five-per-woman [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (2023) and other sources – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (2023); Gapminder (2015); United Nations - World Population Prospects (2022); Gapminder (2017) – processed by Our World in Data. “Number of child deaths per woman” [dataset]. Gapminder, “Child mortality rate under age five v7”; United Nations, “World Population Prospects”; Gapminder, “Babies per woman (total fertility rate) v12” [original data]. Retrieved June 9, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-died-before-five-per-woman