Gates Package — page 1080

Now skip ahead another three decades to 2019, the latest year for which data is available. That year, less than 4 percent of the world's children died before age five. In Africa, less than 7 percent did, and in Asia, less than 3 percent did. I know this is a lot of numbers. To keep it simple, you can think of it as 20-10-5. In 1960, 20 percent of the world's children died. In 1990, it was 10 percent. Today it's less than 5 percent. The world keeps cutting the child mortality rate in half, and we're on track to do it again by [YEAR]. <~?~Insert art 036_Gate_9780593534489_art_r1> More children are surviving today than at any other point in history. In the year 1950, roughly 20 percent of children born did not reach their fifth birthday. Today, that number is below 5 percent. (UN World Population Prospectus 2019) This is one of the great stories in human history, one that every high school student should know by heart. If you remember only one fact that illustrates the trajectory of human health over the past half century or so, it should be 20-10-5. And yet, 5 percent is still heartbreakingly high. It amounts to more than 5 million children a year. Taken in isolation, preventing 5 million deaths sounds like impossible task. But when you see the number in context, when you understand how far the world has come, it becomes a challenge and an inspiration to do even better. At least it did for me. It's the main focus of my work since I transitioned to working full-time at the Gates Foundation. Over the years, I've given enough speeches on 20-10-5 and seen enough tweets and Facebook comments to know the question that inevitably comes next: Won't saving all these children lead to overpopulation?