Roughly 63 million people died worldwide in 2024, a number that, on its own, sounds like evidence of a world in crisis. It is closer to the opposite. That figure represents a species living dramatically longer than it did even a few decades ago, and the coming rise in annual global deaths, one of the more counterintuitive projections in demography, will happen precisely because more people are surviving into old age than ever before, not because mortality is worsening.
The crude death rate is one of the oldest demographic statistics in existence, tracked in some form since parish records began counting burials centuries before modern census systems existed. It remains widely reported today, but, like the crude birth rate covered elsewhere in this series, it is frequently misread. A country’s crude death rate says as much about its age structure as about how healthy or unhealthy its population actually is.
What Is the World Death Rate?
- Definition of crude death rate: the number of deaths occurring during a year, divided by the total midyear population, expressed per 1,000 people.
- Deaths per 1,000 people: the global crude death rate stands at approximately 7.7 to 7.8 per 1,000 population as of 2024.
- How the indicator is calculated: total annual deaths divided by total population, multiplied by 1,000, a straightforward calculation that mixes together mortality risk and age structure.
- Difference from age-standardized mortality rate: the crude death rate is heavily influenced by how old a population is, while an age-standardized mortality rate adjusts for age structure to allow fairer comparisons of underlying health outcomes between countries with very different populations.
How Many People Die Around the World Each Year?
- Annual global deaths: approximately 63 million in 2024, according to Our World in Data’s analysis of UN figures.
- Historical changes: annual global deaths have risen gradually for decades, driven almost entirely by population growth and aging rather than any decline in health outcomes, since mortality risk at any given age has fallen substantially over the same period.
- Deaths per day: approximately 172,600, based on 63 million annual deaths divided across 365 days.
- Deaths per hour: approximately 7,190.
- Why total deaths can rise even when mortality improves: as a population ages, the sheer number of people reaching the ages where death becomes statistically more likely rises, pushing total annual deaths upward even as the risk of dying at any specific age keeps falling.
How Global Mortality Has Changed Through History
- High mortality in preindustrial societies: life expectancy at birth hovered around 30 years for most of human history, weighed down heavily by extremely high child mortality rather than short adult lifespans alone.
- Child mortality: historically, a substantial share of all deaths occurred before age five, a pattern that has reversed dramatically over the past century.
- Infectious diseases: epidemic and endemic infectious disease was the dominant cause of death across nearly all pre-modern societies.
- Sanitation: clean water and sewage infrastructure, expanding rapidly across the 19th and 20th centuries, cut deaths from waterborne disease dramatically.
- Vaccination: beginning with smallpox and expanding through the 20th century, vaccination programs eliminated or sharply reduced several of history’s leading killers.
- Antibiotics: the widespread availability of antibiotics after World War Two transformed previously fatal bacterial infections into treatable conditions.
- Modern medical care: advances in surgery, chronic disease management, and emergency medicine have continued extending survival well into the 21st century.
- Rising life expectancy: global life expectancy at birth reached 73.3 years in 2024, up 8.4 years since 1995 alone, and is projected to reach around 77.4 years by 2054.
Countries With the Highest Death Rates
Counterintuitively, some of the world’s wealthiest, longest-living countries post the highest crude death rates, because their populations are so old. Germany, for example, recorded a crude death rate of around 12 per 1,000 in 2023, notably higher than several countries with objectively worse overall health outcomes but younger populations.
- Why older populations can have high crude death rates: a population with a large share of residents in their 70s, 80s, and beyond will record more deaths per 1,000 people than a young population, even with excellent healthcare, simply because more of its residents are at an age where death becomes statistically likely.
- Difference between high mortality and high crude death rate: a country can have a high crude death rate purely because of its age structure while actually having lower mortality risk at every individual age than a younger country with a lower crude death rate.
- Examples of aging countries: Japan, Italy, Bulgaria, and several other countries with the world’s oldest population structures all post crude death rates well above the global average, almost entirely due to age composition rather than poor health outcomes.
Countries With the Lowest Death Rates
At the other extreme, countries with young population structures, including several in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, can post low crude death rates even when health outcomes and life expectancy are objectively worse than in aging, wealthy countries.
- Younger population structures: South Korea, for example, recorded a crude death rate of only around 6 per 1,000 in 2023, lower than Germany’s, despite South Korea’s own aging challenges, largely reflecting differences in population structure at the time of measurement.
- Mortality patterns: several oil-rich Gulf states with very young, migrant-heavy working populations post some of the lowest crude death rates in the world.
- Why a low crude death rate does not automatically mean better health outcomes: a young country with poor healthcare infrastructure can still post a low crude death rate simply because few of its residents have yet reached the ages where mortality risk rises sharply.
The Biggest Causes of Death
- Cardiovascular disease: the leading cause of death worldwide, responsible for close to a third of all global deaths, driven by heart disease and stroke.
- Cancer: the second-leading cause of death globally, with incidence rising as populations age and survive past causes of death that once claimed lives earlier.
- Respiratory diseases: chronic respiratory conditions and acute respiratory infections together account for a substantial share of global deaths, particularly in lower-income regions.
- Infectious diseases: while dramatically reduced from historical levels, infectious disease, including tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS, remains a leading cause of death in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Injuries: road traffic accidents, falls, and other injuries account for a meaningful and largely preventable share of global deaths.
- Maternal and child mortality: though dramatically reduced since the mid-20th century, maternal and child mortality remain significantly elevated in several lower-income regions compared with the global average.
- Regional differences: wealthier, older countries see mortality dominated by cardiovascular disease and cancer, while lower-income countries continue to see a comparatively larger share of deaths from infectious disease and maternal or child causes.
Child Mortality and the Global Population Story
- Historical child mortality: for most of human history, a substantial share of all children died before reaching adulthood, a grim reality that shaped fertility patterns for millennia.
- Decline in under-5 mortality: under-5 mortality has fallen dramatically since the mid-20th century, one of the most significant public health achievements in modern history.
- Impact on population growth: falling child mortality, arriving well before falling fertility, is the primary reason population growth accelerated so sharply through the 20th century, since families kept having children at historically typical rates while more of those children survived.
- Remaining global disparities: despite enormous progress, under-5 mortality rates in the highest-burden countries remain many times higher than in the lowest-burden countries.
Death Rates and Population Aging
- Why aging can raise crude death rates: as covered above, a population moving toward an older age structure will see its crude death rate rise even as mortality risk at every individual age continues falling.
- Growing number of deaths in older societies: countries such as Japan, Germany, and Italy are already seeing rising total annual deaths driven by their aging populations, a trend that will intensify as their large older cohorts continue moving through the age structure.
- Difference between mortality risk and total deaths: policymakers and the public frequently conflate a rising number of total deaths with worsening health outcomes, when in most aging societies the opposite is closer to true: people are dying later in life than ever before, but there are simply more people old enough to die.
Death Rates, Birth Rates and Natural Population Change
- Births minus deaths: in 2024, the world recorded approximately 132 million births against approximately 63 million deaths, a natural increase of roughly 69 million people, equivalent to a growth rate of about 0.84 percent.
- Natural population growth: this births-minus-deaths gap, independent of migration, remains the primary driver of global population growth.
- Natural population decline: in an increasing number of individual countries, deaths now exceed births, producing natural population decline that only continued immigration can offset.
- Role of migration: migration redistributes where people live but does not affect the global birth-death balance, which is why global population growth depends entirely on the gap between worldwide births and worldwide deaths.
How Death Rates May Change in the Future
- Continued longevity gains: global life expectancy is projected to keep rising, reaching approximately 77.4 years by 2054, extending average survival further still.
- Aging populations: as the world’s population continues aging, annual global deaths are projected to keep rising in absolute terms even as mortality risk at any given age continues to fall.
- Chronic disease: the global disease burden is shifting further toward chronic, age-related conditions and away from infectious disease as populations age and public health infrastructure continues improving.
- Medical innovation: continued advances in treating cardiovascular disease and cancer, the two leading global causes of death, could meaningfully affect future mortality trends if current research trajectories continue.
- Regional differences: mortality patterns will likely continue diverging, with aging societies seeing rising crude death rates driven by demographics, while younger, high-mortality regions see continued gains from expanding basic healthcare access.
- Future global mortality patterns: annual global deaths are projected to keep rising through the rest of the century, eventually converging with annual births later this century, the point at which global population growth itself will finally come to an end.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the world’s crude death rate?
Approximately 7.7 to 7.8 deaths per 1,000 people as of 2024.
2. How many people die worldwide each year?
Approximately 63 million, according to recent UN-derived estimates.
3. How many people die per day worldwide?
Approximately 172,600, based on annual deaths divided across the year.
4. Why do some wealthy, healthy countries have high crude death rates?
Because their populations are older on average, and a larger share of residents are at an age where death becomes statistically more likely, independent of the quality of healthcare available.
5. What is the leading cause of death worldwide?
Cardiovascular disease, responsible for close to a third of all global deaths.
6. Is the world’s death rate rising or falling?
The crude death rate has been broadly stable to slightly rising in recent years, and the total number of annual deaths is projected to keep rising as the global population ages, even as mortality risk at each age continues to fall.
7. What is the difference between crude death rate and mortality risk?
Crude death rate reflects total deaths relative to total population, heavily shaped by age structure, while mortality risk measures the likelihood of death at a specific age, a cleaner indicator of underlying health outcomes.
8. How has global life expectancy changed in recent decades?
It reached 73.3 years in 2024, up 8.4 years since 1995, and is projected to reach approximately 77.4 years by 2054.
9. When will global deaths exceed global births?
Later this century, according to UN projections, at which point global population growth will come to an end.
10. Why did child mortality decline matter so much for population growth?
Because it fell well before fertility did, meaning families kept having children at historically typical rates while far more of those children survived, driving the rapid population growth of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Sources
- Our World in Data, “How Many People Die and How Many Are Born Each Year?”
- World Bank, “Death Rate, Crude (per 1,000 People),” based on UN World Population Prospects 2024
- United Nations, World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results, Population Division
- StatisticsTimes.com, “World Death and Birth Rate 2026”
- World Health Organization, global causes of death data
