Children in rich countries are much less likely to die than a few decades ago, but we rarely hear about this progress

In most rich countries, child mortality has more than halved in the last thirty years; we know we can go further.

As recently as 1990, one in five newborns in Ethiopia would die before the age of five. This was the norm across many poorer countries. Since most couples would have more than five children , many parents had to see one of their children die. If you were born into one of these families — and among those that survived — there’s a high chance that you would have grieved the loss of a brother or sister.

But in the last 30 years, child mortality rates have plummeted in low-income countries. In Ethiopia, they’ve dropped from 20% to 5%, as shown in the chart below. The Gambia and Afghanistan are just two more examples of countries with dramatic declines.