MORTALITY TRENDS

• Trends in national mortality rates •  

Graphs showing time trends in mortality rates

Population of the world and continental regions,

children (aged less than 15 years): 1950-2010

Graph showing population of children in world and continents

Notes: The number of children in the world has been constant since 1999 at around 1.85 billion. In 2005, 1.10 billion children were in Asia, 380 million in Africa, 170 million in Latin America and the Caribbean, 120 million in Europe, 70 million in North America, and 8 million in Oceania.

In most regions the number of children is either decreasing or not changing greatly, but in Africa it continues to increase by about 7 million a year. Europe's number of children peaked in 1966 at nearly 170 million.

Source of data: United Nations Population Division, "World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision".

WHO mortality rates for particular countries, ages and causes of death