Health priorities since the UN Millennium Declaration have focused strongly on children younger than 5 years. The health of older children (age 5–9 years) and younger adolescents (age 10–14 years) has been neglected until recently, especially in low-income and middle-income countries, and mortality measures for these age groups have often been derived from overly fl exible models. We report global and regional empirical mortality estimates for children aged 5–14 years in low-income and middle-income countries, and compare them with ones from existing models.