1in8B › Odds by country › Iraq

If you were born in Iraq

1 in 112 babies on Earth is born in Iraq, about 1.18 million a year. If your birthplace were drawn by lot, you would be born here with a chance of 1 in 112. Below is what awaits a child born here, according to the statistics, and three lives lived here in the game.

What stands out here

People here live 1.1 years less than the world average: 72.4 years against 73.5 years.
2.2 in 100 children here die before age five, 1.7 times fewer than the world average.
The World Bank classes it as an upper-middle-income country. There are 52 such countries, and 25 in 100 of the world’s babies are born in them.
Women here have 3.2 children on average; the world average is 2.2.
It is one of the ten countries where the fewest women work or look for work: 11 in 100.

The odds in numbers

Indicator	Iraq	World
Births a year	1,177,755	132,315,943
Chance of being born here	1 in 112	—
Life expectancy, men	70.5 years	71 years
Life expectancy, women	74.2 years	75.9 years
Die before age 1, per 100 children	2	2.8
Die before age 5, per 100 children	2.2	3.7
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 men	15	17
Die between ages 15 and 60, per 100 women	11	11
Maternal deaths per 100,000 births	66	187
Children per woman	3.2	2.2
GDP per person a year, at purchasing power parity	$14,300	$25,400
Income inequality, Gini index (0–100)	29.8	—
Can read and write, per 100 adults	84	86
Average years of schooling, adults	6.8 years	8.4 years
University enrolment, gross ratio (can exceed 100)	16	48
Married before 18, per 100 young women	28	16
Live in cities, per 100	70	58
Work in farming, per 100 workers	8.2	27
Working or looking for work, per 100 women	11	48
Living with HIV, per 100 adults aged 15–49	0.1	0.7
Homicides per 100,000 people a year	10.9	4.8
Road deaths per 100,000 people a year	21.5	15
Suicides per 100,000 people a year	3	9.1
Use tobacco, per 100 adults	20	20
Born in another country, per 100 residents	0.8	3.7
Life evaluation, 0 to 10	5.2	5.4

“World” is the average weighted by population, and by births for child and maternal mortality. ≈ marks an estimate: there is no published figure for this country.

Three lives lived here in the game

This is how the life of a child born in Iraq could turn out. The game lived 20 lives on its own, with no player, by this country’s numbers. Here are three of them: one of the shortest, the middle one and one of the longest.

Sajjad al-Lami
Born in 2026 in rural Iraq, into a middle-income family. Education: never went to school. 35 years of work, last as cleaner. Married. Age at death: 54 years. Cause: a heart attack.
Masoud Zebari
Born in 2026 in a small town, Iraq, into one of the poorest families. Education: lower secondary school. 45 years of work. Divorced. 6 children. 21 grandchildren. Age at death: 80 years. Cause: a heart attack.
Ban al-Fatlawi
Born in 2026 in rural Iraq, into a family of modest means. Education: primary school. 47 years of work. Widowed. 4 children. 15 grandchildren. Age at death: 88 years. Cause: a heart attack.

These people are made up, and three lives are not statistics. The real numbers are in the table above.

You cannot pick a country in 1in8B: the draw decides. This one comes up with a chance of 1 in 112.

Be born

Other countries

Data: the UN, the World Bank (release of October 8, 2026), WHO, UNICEF, UNESCO, the ILO and the World Happiness Report. Where the numbers come from and what in the game is real