Believe it or not, living until age five used to be difficult. And it wasn’t that long ago. In the early 1900s, 30% of all deaths in the U.S. occurred in children under five, according to data. Thankfully, that number has since declined sharply. In 1999, 1.4% of deaths in the U.S. were in children under age five—still a tragedy, but the significant progress is important and, in large part, because of vaccines.
About 2.5 million deaths in children under age five were prevented because of measles, polio and diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccines, the CDC reports.