Causes of death around the world for different groups

Mortality varies widely by geography and demographic group. It has also changed over time with improvements in medicine or availability of resources. Our World in Data shows the differences with a treemap. Use the dropdown menus to select groups and a slider to shift time.

For low-income countries:

[N]on-communicable diseases account for 43% of deaths; that’s a much smaller share than in the world as a whole (75%). That’s not because death rates of these diseases are lower in poorer countries; adjusting for age, they’re actually higher than they are in rich countries.

The difference is that death rates from infections, injuries, and child and maternal mortality are far higher. One in three die from infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, meningitis, and tuberculosis.

Maybe the hardest number in this dataset to sit with is that one in ten deaths is a newborn or a mother leaving children behind.