What Do Australia’s 2025 Figures Show About Neonatal Deaths?

Sonal Goyal

10 November 2026 10:05 PM AEDT

What Do Australia’s 2025 Figures Show About Neonatal Deaths?

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Highlights

Neonatal deaths increased to 784 in 2025 from 719 in 2024.
The neonatal death rate rose to 2.7 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Both the neonatal count and rate were the highest in the published 2021–2025 series.

Neonatal deaths in Australia increased by 9.0% in 2025, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics release published on 10 November 2026. The ABS received 784 neonatal deaths, up 65 from 719 in 2024. Over the same period, the neonatal death rate increased from 2.5 to 2.7 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Neonatal Deaths Across Five Reference Years

The published series records 745 neonatal deaths in 2021, 695 in 2022 and 660 in 2023. The count then increased to 719 in 2024 and 784 in 2025.

The 2025 figure was 124 deaths above the 2023 figure and 39 above the 2021 figure. These are comparisons of recorded counts across the reference years; the release does not identify a cause for the increases.

The neonatal death rate was 2.4 per 1,000 live births in 2021, followed by 2.3 in both 2022 and 2023. It rose to 2.5 in 2024 and 2.7 in 2025.

A Different Direction From the Perinatal Total

Neonatal deaths are one component of the perinatal total, alongside stillbirths. The total number of perinatal deaths decreased by 1.9% to 2,895 in 2025, despite the rise in neonatal deaths.

Stillbirths declined by 122 to 2,111, while neonatal deaths increased by 65. The combined change was a reduction of 57 deaths from the 2024 perinatal total of 2,952.

The national perinatal death rate fell to 9.8 per 1,000 births from 10.0. The stillbirth rate decreased to 7.2 per 1,000 births from 7.6. These declines occurred in the same reference year as the higher neonatal rate.

What the Neonatal Category Covers

For this publication, neonatal deaths are deaths of live born babies within 28 completed days of birth. The category includes babies of any birth weight or gestation.

The neonatal death rate is calculated per 1,000 live births. This differs from the stillbirth and perinatal death rates, which use live births plus stillbirths as their denominator. The three rates therefore do not share an identical birth base.

The publication generally presents deaths by year of registration. Its administrative sources include state and territory Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages. The ABS advises readers to interpret perinatal death rates with caution and refers to its methodology for influences on birth registrations.

The national publication also identifies a break in the stillbirth Time Series following a change to the Victorian collection. That change affects Victorian and national data and is relevant when reading the broader perinatal figures alongside neonatal statistics.

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