Our World in Data presents the empirical evidence on global development in entries dedicated to specific topics.This blog post draws on data and research discussed in our new entry on Causes of Death.
This post was first published in February 2018 using statistics for 2016. It was later updated in April 2019 with the latest data for 2017.
The world has changed considerably over the last few centuries — this is what Our World in Data shows. One thing however has remained constant through this transition: we all have to die sometime. However, the causes of death are changing as living standards improve, healthcare advances, and lifestyles change.
In this blog we attempt to answer the question ‘what do people die from?’, first by looking at the data on global causes of death followed by a selection of country-level examples. The leading causes of death across the world still vary significantly — we have therefore picked a selection of countries which highlight this heterogeneity.
First, let’s start with the question: ‘what does the world die from?’
