Revealed: These Are The Countries with the Highest Death Rates, 2024

Human resources are considered one of the key drivers of a country’s economy. As a result, population analysts monitor death rates to gain an understanding of the overall health and well-being of a population. A country’s mortality or death rate is the number of deaths that occur within a specific population during a particular period. This figure is expressed as the number of deceased individuals per thousand people within a year.

CEOWORLD magazine aims to inform its readers about the countries with the highest death rates. To gather this information, researchers have used data from various institutions such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In addition to learning about the countries with the highest mortality rates, readers will also discover the common causes of death in these regions.

How important is knowing about a country’s mortality rate?

A country’s economy is dependent on its population or human resources. Countries with high death rates and relatively low birth and fertility incidences have the trouble of a decreasing population. This trend hurts the economy. Hence, population analysts’ duty is essential. They can help government officials make policies with their collected data on what specific issues are affecting the population and causing it to decline. Solutions can be formulated for these problems, which can significantly aid a country’s economy in the long term.

What are the factors that affect death rates in a country?

Mortality rates in a country can be high or low depending on several elements. They include quality healthcare services, clean and potable water, physical exercise, and a proper diet. Countries whose people don’t engage in regular workouts and don’t consume nutritious meals face serious health risks like diabetes, which is a diet-related illness that placed ninth in the Global Health Data Exchange data. Meanwhile, cardiovascular ailments were the major cause of death globally during that period. These diseases are caused by obesity due to unhealthy eating practices. Other factors affecting a country’s mortality rate include disease outbreaks. The coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a considerable surge in the 2020 to 2021 global death count.

Additionally, gun-related violence increases fatalities, such as those that happen in the United States as well as civil and international wars, like the ongoing armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and the Hamas militants.

What are the global mortality trends in 2024?

Mortality incidences differ among countries. Developed countries generally have lower death rates than the least-developed regions, since the former have improved and advanced healthcare facilities and networks. Moreover, they don’t struggle to give citizens basic needs like sufficient food, clean drinking water, and proper sanitation. Hence, people in developed countries have lower risks of health complications and different ailments than those from poor countries.

However, advanced economies also have problems with critical diseases such as high diabetes and obesity incidences. This trend is due to the widespread availability of unhealthy processed foods. Furthermore, the lifestyle of people in developed countries limits the capabilities of these nations’ modernized healthcare systems. For instance, cancer has been the world’s second major cause of death, and it is prevalent in developed nations with high alcoholism and smoking incidences.

The total daily birth tally on an international level generally surpasses the total daily death count by a wide margin. Nevertheless, this trend is anticipated to drop over the coming century as more women worldwide choose not to bear children. Based on a January 2024 Wall Street Journal report, the government of China – the world’s most 2nd-populated country to date – is pressing the country’s female population to have more babies. However, many are refusing. Hence, population analysts believe China’s 1.4 billion populace will plummet sharply to about half a billion by 2100.

Which countries have the highest death rates? 

The following list of countries with the highest mortality rates in the world:

Countries with the Highest Death Rates, 2024

Readers will discover nations with figures referring to the high crude death rate per country and the primary causes people lose their lives in these regions. Bulgaria’s death rate is 15.4 deaths per 1,000 people. This number makes it the country with the highest death rate in the world. The main causes of death in Bulgaria are the same as those in other European nations, per the WHO. They comprise cancers and non-communicable illnesses affecting the human respiratory, circulatory, and digestive systems. As the world’s country with the highest death rate, Bulgaria’s current population is falling. In 2000, this decline began at roughly 9 million people. Bulgaria’s populace is expected to be reduced to between 2.8 million and 5 million.

Second to Bulgaria is Ukraine, with 15.2 deaths per 1,000 people, making it the world’s nation with the second-highest death incidence. Ukraine is undergoing demographic problems due to its low birth and high mortality rates. This Eastern European country’s overall healthcare system is not funded properly by the government and vaccination rates are quite low. Moreover, in 2019, Ukrainians were beset by one of the world’s worst measles epidemics. Their country has one of the most rapidly growing HIV and AIDS epidemics worldwide as well. One element contributing to Ukraine’s high death rate is the elevated mortality incidence of working-age men from preventable causes like smoking and alcohol poisoning. The country’s healthcare system requires increased government financing to be better managed and help decrease the high disorder and sickness rates.

Latvia has the same problem as Ukraine, in which its healthcare system is inadequately financed by the government. The death rate in this Northern European country is 14.6 deaths per 1,000 people. Life expectancy is better in Latvia today, yet more work must be done for the country to graduate from being a laggard in the European Union. People with low educational attainments, men’s greater exposure to hazards like obesity, binge drinking, and smoking, and the low-income segment of the Latvian population propel this country’s high mortality incidence. The life expectancy of people who did not attain high educational levels in Latvia is a decade lower than those who finished university education.

As the world’s country with the fourth-highest death rate, Lesotho’s people have struggled with diseases that are major mortality causes. They are ischemic heart disease, HIV and AIDS, and stroke. Lower respiratory infections and tuberculosis also contribute to Lesotho’s mortality rate of 14.3 deaths per 1,000 people. The landlocked country in Southern Africa has 52 years for males and 56 years for females as the figures for life expectancy at birth, per the CDC. The infant death rate in Lesotho is 59 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Various serious diseases lead to many death incidences in Lithuania, a European country where the mortality rate is 13.6 deaths per 1,000 people. Stroke and ischemic heart illnesses are the two major causes of deceased people in Lithuania, based on a WHO report. Because of the high smoking rates in the country, lung cancer has become the third leading reason why people die in the Baltic country. In the European Union, Lithuania has the lowest life expectancy at 74.8 years.

Serbia ranks sixth on this list of countries with the highest mortality rates. CEOWorld Magazine’s researchers found that this country at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe has a mortality incidence of 13.2 deaths per 1,000 people. According to one study, the mortality rate in Serbia was at its lowest in the 1960s when it was merely between 8 and 9 deaths per 1,000 people. Nevertheless, these figures surged at the start of the 2000s, with 14 deaths per 1,000 people. Many factors affect Serbia’s high death rate. Among them is the country’s aging populace. Cardiovascular and chronic non-communicable ailments also lead when it comes to the major death causes in Serbia. This country is one of the world’s ten nations with the highest smoking incidence.

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