India's Under-Five Mortality: A Story of Steady Progress
India's under-five death rate fell 79% since 1990 — from 127 to 27 per 1,000 (UN IGME 2025). A story of steady progress, and where our focus goes next.
India's Under-Five Mortality: A Story of Steady Progress
Not every headline about children's health is heavy. One of the most important stories of the past few decades is quietly hopeful: an Indian baby born today is far more likely to see their fifth birthday than a baby born a generation ago. The progress is real, measurable, and worth understanding.
How far India has come
The under-five mortality rate counts how many children out of every 1,000 born alive die before turning five. According to the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME) 2025 report, India's rate fell from 127 per 1,000 in 1990 to 27 per 1,000 in 2024 — a 79% decline. The report went so far as to describe India as a leading global exemplar for sustaining these gains, even as progress has slowed in much of the world. Globally, an estimated 4.9 million children still died before their fifth birthday in 2024, so the direction of India's curve matters enormously.
India's own official count
India's Sample Registration System (SRS), run by the Registrar General of India, tells a similar story from its own records. The SRS 2021 report put India's figures at:
- Under-five mortality rate: 31 per 1,000 live births
- Infant mortality rate: 27 per 1,000
- Neonatal mortality rate: 19 per 1,000
All three have fallen steadily; in 2014 the same measures stood at 45, 39 and 26 respectively. Different methods give slightly different numbers, but every credible source points the same way: down.
The new frontier: the first month of life
As overall deaths fall, a clear pattern emerges. With neonatal mortality at 19 and under-five mortality at 31 (SRS 2021), most under-five deaths in India now happen in the first 28 days of life. UN IGME estimates the neonatal rate dropped from 57 per 1,000 in 1990 to 17 in 2024, but it remains the toughest challenge. India's Sustainable Development Goal targets for 2030 are an under-five rate of 25 or below and a neonatal rate of 12 or below, so the newborn period is where the most work still lies.
What's driving progress, and your part in it
The decline is not luck. It rests on things that reach ordinary families: wider immunisation, more births in health facilities with trained help, oral rehydration for diarrhoea, breastfeeding, and better nutrition. Every one of those has a version you can act on at home:
- Keep your baby's vaccines on schedule
- Choose a facility birth and attend antenatal and postnatal check-ups
- Breastfeed early and exclusively for the first six months
- Learn the newborn danger signs, such as poor feeding, fast breathing or fever, and act on them quickly
The statistics describe a country, but they are built from individual babies who thrived because someone paid attention. If you are expecting, or caring for a newborn, the surest way to keep your own child on the right side of these numbers is regular, trusting contact with your paediatrician and local health team, especially in those precious first weeks.