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.

What is the Infant Mortality Rate by Country Reference?

Searchable reference table of infant mortality rates — deaths of children under one year per 1,000 live births — by country, based on UN estimates, with sortable columns and a development band. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Infant Mortality Rate by Country Reference

Name: Infant Mortality Rate by Country Reference
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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.

What drives the differences between countries

Infant mortality is not simply a function of wealth, though income is strongly correlated. The drivers that most directly move the number are:

Access to skilled birth attendance: A large share of neonatal deaths — those in the first 28 days — occur during or immediately after delivery. Countries where most births happen with a trained midwife or doctor in attendance have dramatically lower neonatal mortality. This is why some middle-income countries with strong midwifery training outperform wealthier peers with fragmented obstetric care.

Clean water and sanitation: Post-neonatal infant mortality (deaths between 1 and 12 months) is strongly driven by infectious diarrhoeal disease, which is almost entirely attributable to unsafe water. Sub-Saharan African countries that have improved rural water access have seen measurable falls in IMR without corresponding increases in income.

Vaccination coverage: The Expanded Programme on Immunization targets preventable deaths from measles, pertussis, tetanus, and other diseases. Countries with high coverage of routine immunizations show IMRs well below what their income would predict. Coverage gaps — often in conflict-affected areas — show up as stubbornly high rates.

Maternal nutrition: Infant birth weight is one of the strongest predictors of survival. Maternal undernutrition before and during pregnancy leads to low birth weight, which multiplies the risk of neonatal complications. Countries with high rates of maternal stunting often show elevated IMR even when access to facility delivery is reasonable.

Healthcare quality and proximity: Rural-urban gaps within countries can be as large as the gaps between countries. A single national figure can mask stark internal inequalities.

Reading the table

Sort ascending by Rate to see the global leaders in newborn survival — typically small, wealthy nations with universal healthcare and high birth-attendance rates.
Sort descending to see the highest-burden countries, concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia, where the absolute number of preventable deaths is greatest.
The Very low band (under 5 per 1,000) represents a level that was historically unprecedented even a century ago; much of northern and western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and others now sit there.
The gap between the lowest and highest rates spans more than an order of magnitude, which underlines how much of infant death remains preventable.

IMR and life expectancy

IMR and life expectancy at birth move closely together because early deaths compress the average lifetime most severely. Each infant death removes the full expected lifespan from the average. A country moving from an IMR of 60 to 20 gains years of life expectancy at birth that dwarf the gains achievable by reducing mortality at older ages, making infant and child survival the single highest-leverage intervention for improving population longevity statistics.

Notes

Figures are based on UN IGME estimates and represent recent annual averages rather than the most recent calendar year. Exact figures shift with new releases.
Always cite the source and vintage when using these numbers in research or policy work.