Our World in Data - Life Expectancy

What do the terms “period” and “cohort” mean in statistics? How do they differ, and why does it matter?

Americans have a lower life expectancy than people in other rich countries despite paying much more for healthcare. What factors may explain this?

November 03, 2025 It’s a common misconception that life expectancy has increased only because fewer children die. Historical mortality records show that adults today also live much longer than adults in the past. It’s true that child mortality rates were much higher in the past, and their decline has greatly improved overall life expectancy. But in recent decades, improvements in survival at olde…

October 28, 2024 Life expectancy at birth dropped significantly across the world in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, rates are now returning to pre-pandemic levels. The chart shows this rebound, based on the latest estimates from the UN’s World Population Prospects. Global life expectancy in 2022 matched the 2019 figure at 72.6 years. And it increased again in 2023, to 73.2 ye…

It’s often argued that life expectancy across the world has only increased because child mortality has fallen. But this is untrue. The data shows that life expectancy has increased at all ages.

Women tend to live longer than men in all countries — but the sex gap in life expectancy is not a constant.

How is life expectancy calculated, and what does it mean? What’s the difference between period and cohort life expectancy?

March 20, 2025 In every country in the world, women live longer than men — but the size of this gap in life expectancy varies widely. The difference is striking in some countries, like Russia and Ukraine, where women’s life expectancy is over 10 years longer. Their gaps have been wide due to higher death rates in young and middle-aged men — often due to alcohol use, smoking, and other risks. The …

If we manage to avoid a large catastrophe, we are living at the early beginnings of human history.

February 24, 2025 In every country in the world, women tend to live longer than men. You can see this in the chart, which shows the average life expectancy of women on the vertical axis and the life expectancy of men on the horizontal axis, both for 2023. Each dot is one country. As you can see, all countries lie above the middle line, which means that women's life expectancy was higher than men'…

Life expectancy has doubled over the last two centuries around the world. How has this happened?

July 05, 2024 The world has seen big gains in life expectancy in recent decades, yet the United States increasingly lags behind peer countries. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the period life expectancy

March 18, 2024 The “modal age at death” is the most common age at which people in a population die. The modal age at death for women in Japan in 2021 was 93. In France, it was 92. This metric helps us understand trends in longevity at older ages. Unlike life expectancy, it is not affected by infant or child mortality. You can see that over time, the figure has been rising steadily. In France in 1…

People are living longer across the world, but large differences remain. Explore global data on life expectancy and how it has changed over time.

October 10, 2025 Where you are born and stay for much of your life is a strong predictor of how long you’re likely to live. The chart shows the differences in period life expectancy across continents. Average life expectancy has converged to a fairly narrow band between 75 and 80 years in North America, Oceania, Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Africa stands out: its average life expectancy is 64…

February 04, 2025 We can expect to live more than twice as long as our ancestors in 1900. As the chart shows, global average life expectancy was just 32 years at the beginning of the 20th century. This was a short life by today’s standards: in 2023, the average life expectancy had increased to 73 years. That’s 41 years longer. This remarkable increase is due to improved living standards, like bet…

Death rates decline rapidly after birth but rise again in adolescence. From adulthood onwards, they rise exponentially.