At One Place

How many people die each day?

How many people die each day?
about 170,000 — roughly two every second
Cardiovascular disease kills roughly 20 million people a year — more than all infectious diseases, cancers of the digestive system and road traffic injuries combined.

Around 62 million people die each year, about 170,000 a day. Roughly three-quarters of deaths are from non-communicable causes; cardiovascular disease alone accounts for about a third of all deaths worldwide, and it has been the leading cause every year on record. Deaths are rising slowly not because health is worsening but because the population is both larger and older than it was.

How the figure is arrived at

Death registration with cause coded to the International Classification of Diseases. Coverage is the weak point: fewer than half of the world's deaths are medically certified, so for much of the world cause of death is estimated from verbal autopsy surveys and statistical models rather than recorded.

How confident it is

Low estimate
165,000
High estimate
175,000
Spread
1.1× between the bounds

Other every day counts

Common questions

How many people die each day?
about 170,000 — roughly two every second
How is that estimated?
Death registration with cause coded to the International Classification of Diseases. Coverage is the weak point: fewer than half of the world's deaths are medically certified, so for much of the world cause of death is estimated from verbal autopsy surveys and statistical models rather than recorded.

Related pages

Sources

  1. World Health Organization — WHO

How these figures are compiled and checked