Children are dying at the highest rate in 13 years

The share of children and teens who die each year declined for nearly three decades and leveled off in the 2010s. Then, in 2020, the rate began to increase. By 2021, it reached its highest rate since 2008.

Although this coincided with the pandemic, the virus itself accounted for a small share of the increase. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the growing childhood death rates between 2019 and 2021 were primarily due to firearm injuries, drug overdoses, and car accidents.

Notably, childhood and teenage deaths due to influenza and pneumonia decreased slightly from 2019 to 2021. The CDC has attributed this to the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine and COVID-19 mitigation measures such as wearing masks, washing hands, and reducing travel.

While the CDC has yet to release final data for causes of death in 2022 and 2023, it releases data each week for pediatric deaths caused by influenza. After the marked decrease in influenza-related deaths in 2020 and 2021, the agency reported that death rates attributed to pediatric flu returned to pre-pandemic levels during the 2022–2023 flu season.

Injuries from firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens

In 2020, firearms surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for children and teens. Deaths due to firearm-related injuries — including death by homicide, suicide, or accident — were around 20% of all child and teen deaths in 2020 and 2021, the largest proportion in at least four decades.

For some children, this isn’t new. Firearms-related injuries have been the leading cause of death for Black children and teenagers for at least two decades.

For white, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native children, car accidents remain the leading cause of death. Cancer has been the leading cause of death in Asian or Pacific Islander children since 2010.

Sixty-five percent of firearm-related child deaths in 2021 were considered homicides, according to the CDC. Police departments reported detailed information on about half of these homicides through an FBI data-collection program called NIBRS. According to its data, 70% of firearm-related homicides in children occur either on a street or at home, while 0.7% occurred at a school.

Police departments that reported the location of a firearm-related homicide, were also able to report the circumstances around that event. The single most common circumstance — around 14% of events — was an argument. Gangland or juvenile gang involvement were reported in 4% of events, combined. These trends hold true for firearm-related homicides in the US at any age.

Child and teen deaths due to poisoning and drug overdoses nearly doubled during the pandemic

Between 2019 and 2021, drug overdoses surpassed cancer as the third most-common cause of death amongst US children and teens. Every race and ethnicity had an increase in overdose deaths in 2021. It was the third most-common cause of death in all groups except for Asian and Pacific Islander people.

The CDC categorizes poisoning deaths as those where a person was accidentally over-exposed to a wide variety of chemicals including household cleaners, drugs, and alcohol. Between 2019 and 2021, deaths attributed to narcotics and hallucinogens increased more than those from any other poisoning agent, leading to nearly twice as many deaths as the next most-common substance.

Of the 2,079 child and teen overdose deaths in 2021, 53% were attributed to narcotics and hallucinogens. Of those, nearly 75%^[1] involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Read more about deaths in the US attributed to firearms-related injuries, including firearm deaths by suicide or homicide and get the facts every week by signing up for our newsletter.