Global child mortality rate drops below 2.5% for the first time

Story: 2040 C.E. ???  |  Last updated: January 16, 2026

Note: This is an imagined future story, written as if a projected milestone has occurred. It is based on current trends and evidence, not confirmed events.

For the first time in recorded human history, the global child mortality rate has fallen below 2.5% — meaning fewer than 25 in every 1,000 children born worldwide will die before their fifth birthday. In 2040 C.E., the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation confirmed the milestone, calling it the culmination of the most sustained decline in child death rates ever documented. Just two centuries ago, roughly half of all children died before reaching adulthood. The world has rewritten that story, one vaccine, one clean water tap, one trained midwife at a time.

Key projections

• Child mortality rate: The global under-five mortality rate reached 24.7 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2040 C.E., down from approximately 37 per 1,000 in 2022 C.E. and over 90 per 1,000 in 1990 C.E.
• Regional gains: Sub-Saharan Africa, historically the hardest-hit region, drove much of the final push — cutting its under-five mortality rate by more than 40% between 2022 C.E. and 2040 C.E. through expanded community health worker programs and malaria vaccine rollouts.
• Lives saved: Compared to 2022 C.E. rates, an estimated 1.8 million additional children survive each year as a result of the progress made during this period.

How the world got here

The arc of progress stretches back centuries, but the pace accelerated sharply in the late 20th century. In 1800 C.E., roughly 43% of all children died before age five. By 1990 C.E., that figure had fallen to about 9%. By 2022 C.E., it stood near 3.7%.

The final push to cross the 2.5% threshold required addressing what researchers called the “last mile” problem — reaching children in fragile states, remote rural communities, and urban informal settlements where health systems remained thin.

Three interlocking forces made the difference. Expanded malaria vaccines, building on the success of the RTS,S and R21 vaccines approved in the 2020s C.E., dramatically reduced deaths across West and Central Africa. The World Health Organization credited these interventions with preventing an estimated 400,000 deaths annually by 2038 C.E. Simultaneously, global access to oral rehydration therapy — one of the simplest and cheapest life-saving tools ever developed — reached near-universal availability in community health settings.

Then there was the quiet revolution in skilled birth attendance. UNICEF’s decade-long push to train and retain community midwives in high-burden countries helped ensure that the first hours of life — historically among the most dangerous — became dramatically safer.

The role of data and local leadership

One underappreciated driver was the use of real-time mortality data at the district level. Governments that once waited years for national surveys began acting on monthly data, targeting interventions to the specific villages and neighborhoods where children were still dying at disproportionate rates.

Indigenous and rural community health networks played a central role that national statistics rarely capture. In the highlands of Papua New Guinea, the Amazon basin, and the Sahel, community-led health programs built on local knowledge and trust achieved results that top-down programs had struggled to match for decades.

Researchers also point to the Lancet’s findings that improvements in maternal education levels correlated more strongly with child survival gains than almost any other variable — reinforcing long-standing evidence that educating girls and women is among the most effective public health investments available.

This progress mirrors a broader pattern of human health gains. The global suicide rate has fallen significantly since the 1990s C.E., and clean energy now powers nearly half the world’s electricity capacity — reducing the air pollution that contributes to respiratory illness in children. These are connected victories.

What still needs work

Crossing the 2.5% threshold is a landmark, but it obscures deep inequalities that persist in 2040 C.E. A child born in a high-income country faces a mortality rate below 0.4%, while children in parts of Central Africa and South Asia still face rates three to five times the global average.

Conflict zones remain the most intractable challenge. In areas of active armed conflict, child mortality rates have actually risen over the past decade in some cases, as health infrastructure collapses and supply chains for vaccines and medicines break down. The global milestone, real as it is, does not reach every child equally.

Global Burden of Disease researchers note that the leading causes of under-five death are shifting. Pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria have all declined sharply. What remains are preterm birth complications, congenital conditions, and injuries — areas where solutions exist but require health system strengthening rather than single-product interventions.

A number that once seemed impossible

In 1800 C.E., no one would have believed this day was coming. Even optimistic projections from the 1990s C.E. tended to fall short of what was actually achieved. The story of child mortality is, in many ways, the story of what sustained collective effort — across science, governance, community organizing, and international cooperation — can actually accomplish.

The children alive today because of this progress will never know the world their great-grandparents were born into. That invisibility is, in its own way, the truest measure of success.

Read more

For more on this story, see: Our World in Data — Child Mortality

For more from Good News for Humankind, see:

• Global suicide rates have fallen significantly since 1995
• Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
• The Good News for Humankind archive on global health

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