Misc
How Many People Die Each Day?
How Many People Die Each Day?
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, the media continues to rattle off statistics at full force.
However, without a frame of reference, numbers such as the death toll can be difficult to interpret. Mortalities attributed to the virus, for example, are often measured in the thousands of people per day globally—but is this number a little or a lot, relative to typical causes of death?
Today’s graphic uses data from Our World in Data to provide context with the total number of worldwide daily deaths. It also outlines how many people who die each day from specific causes.
Worldwide Deaths by Cause
Nearly 150,000 people die per day worldwide, based on the latest comprehensive research published in 2017. Which diseases are the most deadly, and how many lives do they take per day?
Here’s how many people die each day on average, sorted by cause:
Rank | Cause | Daily Deaths |
---|---|---|
#1 | Cardiovascular diseases | 48,742 |
#2 | Cancers | 26,181 |
#3 | Respiratory diseases | 10,724 |
#4 | Lower respiratory infections | 7,010 |
#5 | Dementia | 6,889 |
#6 | Digestive diseases | 6,514 |
#7 | Neonatal disorders | 4,887 |
#8 | Diarrheal diseases | 4,300 |
#9 | Diabetes | 3,753 |
#10 | Liver diseases | 3,624 |
#11 | Road injuries | 3,406 |
#12 | Kidney disease | 3,370 |
#13 | Tuberculosis | 3,243 |
#14 | HIV/AIDS | 2,615 |
#15 | Suicide | 2,175 |
#16 | Malaria | 1,698 |
#17 | Homicide | 1,111 |
#18 | Parkinson disease | 933 |
#19 | Drowning | 809 |
#20 | Meningitis | 789 |
#21 | Nutritional deficiencies | 740 |
#22 | Protein-energy malnutrition | 635 |
#23 | Maternal disorders | 531 |
#24 | Alcohol use disorders | 507 |
#25 | Drug use disorders | 456 |
#26 | Conflict | 355 |
#27 | Hepatitis | 346 |
#28 | Fire | 330 |
#29 | Poisonings | 198 |
#30 | Heat (hot and cold exposure) | 146 |
#31 | Terrorism | 72 |
#32 | Natural disasters | 26 |
Total Daily Deaths | 147,118 |
Cardiovascular diseases, or diseases of the heart and blood vessels, are the leading cause of death. However, their prominence is not reflected in our perceptions of death nor in the media.
While the death toll for HIV/AIDS peaked in 2004, it still affects many people today. The disease causes over 2,600 daily deaths on average.
Interestingly, terrorism and natural disasters cause very few deaths in relation to other causes. That said, these numbers can vary from day to day—and year to year—depending on the severity of each individual instance.
Total Daily Deaths by Country
On a national level, these statistics vary further. Below are the total deaths from all causes for selected countries, based on 2017 data.
China and India both see more than 25,000 total deaths per day, due to their large populations.
However, with 34.7 daily deaths per million people each day, Russia has the highest deaths proportional to population out of any of these countries.
Keeping Perspective
While these numbers help provide some context for the global scale of COVID-19 deaths, they do not offer a direct comparison.
The fact is that many of the aforementioned death rates are based on much larger and consistent sample sizes of data. On the flipside, since WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, daily confirmed deaths have fallen in a wide range between 272 and 10,520 per day—and there is no telling what could happen in the future.
On top of this variance, data on confirmed COVID-19 deaths has other quirks. For example, testing rates for the virus may vary between jurisdictions, and there have also been disagreements between authorities on how deaths should even be tallied in the first place. This makes getting an accurate picture surprisingly complicated.
While it’s impossible to know the true death toll of COVID-19, it is clear that in some countries daily deaths have reached rates 50% or higher than the historical average for periods of time:
Time, and further analysis, will be required to determine a more accurate COVID-19 death count.
Automotive
How People Get Around in America, Europe, and Asia
Examining how people get around using cars, public transit, and walking or biking, and the regional differences in usage.
How People Get Around in America, Europe, and Asia
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
This chart highlights the popularity of different transportation types in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, calculated by modal share.
Data for this article and visualization is sourced from ‘The ABC of Mobility’, a research paper by Rafael Prieto-Curiel (Complexity Science Hub) and Juan P. Ospina (EAFIT University), accessed through ScienceDirect.
The authors gathered their modal share data through travel surveys, which focused on the primary mode of transportation a person employs for each weekday trip. Information from 800 cities across 61 countries was collected for this study.
North American Car Culture Contrasts with the Rest of the World
In the U.S. and Canada, people heavily rely on cars to get around, no matter the size of the city. There are a few exceptions of course, such as New York, Toronto, and smaller college towns across the United States.
Region | 🚗 Cars | 🚌 Public Transport | 🚶 Walking/Biking |
---|---|---|---|
North America* | 92% | 5% | 4% |
Central America | 23% | 42% | 35% |
South America | 29% | 40% | 31% |
Northern Europe | 48% | 29% | 24% |
Western Europe | 43% | 24% | 34% |
Southern Europe | 50% | 24% | 25% |
Eastern Europe | 35% | 40% | 25% |
Southeastern Asia | 44% | 43% | 13% |
Western Asia | 43% | 28% | 29% |
Southern Asia | 22% | 39% | 39% |
Eastern Asia | 19% | 46% | 35% |
World | 51% | 26% | 22% |
Note: *Excluding Mexico. Percentages are rounded.
As a result, North America’s share of public transport and active mobility (walking and biking) is the lowest amongst all surveyed regions by a significant amount.
On the other hand, public transport reigns supreme in South and Central America as well as Southern and Eastern Asia. It ties with cars in Southeastern Asia, and is eclipsed by cars in Western Asia.
As outlined in the paper, Europe sees more city-level differences in transport popularity.
For example, Utrecht, Netherlands prefers walking and biking. People in Paris and London like using their extensive transit systems. And in Manchester and Rome, roughly two out of three journeys are by car.
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