![[OC] What do people die from in different countries?](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/7zblzvhigyug1-819x1024.png "[OC] What do people die from in different countries?")
On any average day, 165,000 people die globally. That’s 60 million a year.
What do they die from?
Globally, 75% of deaths are from non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Heart disease alone is one in three.
The leading causes of death look very different across the world.
In low-income countries, NCDs are 43% of deaths (lower than the 75% globally) — not because rates are lower, but because so many more die from infections, injuries, and childbirth.
One in ten deaths is a newborn or the mother.
On the other end of the income distribution, we see a very different picture.
In high-income countries, infectious diseases and neonatal and maternal deaths shrink, while NCDs are very dominant — almost 90% of all deaths.
Heart disease and cancers alone are responsible for nearly 60%.
Posted by ourworldindata
7 Comments
**Data source:** Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) [Global Burden of Disease study](https://www.healthdata.org/research-analysis/gbd) (2025)
**Tools used:** the OWID-Grapher with finishing in Figma
Wild how historically the biggest killer of humans is now just 1.1% of deaths
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Greene is an excellent book expanding on these types of data framing and how the cure is not where the disease is.
Crazy that suicide deaths are higher in higher income countries despite all the rest of the data indicating that life should be better in higher income countries
Cigarettes and fast food never killed anyone.
I was not mentally prepared for how much bigger the chunck of neonatal deaths would be in low income countries
https://preview.redd.it/xsjjivv3oyug1.png?width=272&format=png&auto=webp&s=0f638755641e93dd4838d95a8a4504032d899bff
What about warfare? Its killing a lot of people these days.