What is the infant mortality rate?

The infant mortality rate (IMR) is the number of deaths of children under one year of age per 1,000 live births in a given year. It is one of the most sensitive indicators of a country's overall health and development.

How is it different from under-five mortality?

Infant mortality counts deaths before the first birthday, while under-five mortality counts deaths before the fifth birthday. Under-five rates are always higher because they cover a longer span of childhood.

Why is IMR a good development indicator?

It responds quickly to clean water, nutrition, maternal care, vaccination, and healthcare access. Because newborns are so vulnerable, even small improvements in basic services move the number measurably.

What counts as a low rate?

The best-performing countries sit around 2 per 1,000 or below. Rates under 5 are considered very low, while the highest-burden countries can exceed 50 per 1,000 live births.

How current is this data?

Figures are based on the most recent UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) estimates available at publication. Check the source for the latest year before citing.

Infant Mortality Rate by Country Reference

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Infant mortality, country by country

This reference lists the infant mortality rate (IMR) — deaths before the first birthday per 1,000 live births — for the world’s countries, using UN estimates. IMR is among the most powerful single indicators of population health because newborn survival depends directly on clean water, nutrition, skilled birth attendance, vaccination, and access to care.

How it works

The rate is calculated as deaths of children under one year in a year divided by live births that year, multiplied by 1,000:

IMR = (infant deaths / live births) × 1000

A country with 30,000 infant deaths out of 1,000,000 live births has an IMR of 30. The band shown groups each country into Very low (under 5), Low (5–14.9), Moderate (15–34.9), or High (35 and above), making it easy to scan the global distribution at a glance.

Tips and notes

Sort ascending by Rate to see the global leaders in newborn survival — typically small, wealthy nations with universal healthcare.
The gap between the lowest and highest rates spans more than an order of magnitude, which underlines how much of infant death is preventable.
IMR and life expectancy move together: high infant mortality drags down life expectancy at birth strongly because each early death subtracts many potential years.