The horizontal black lines extending from the publication denote the prediction in each publication of the asserted ceiling on life expectancy attainable by humans, Long-run data on life expectancy at birth for the time period since 1800 is available from the, Annual data on ‘Life expectancy at birth’ [by country] – since 1961 – is available in the, Other more specialized data are available in the. 84.3. This led to a very high inequality in how health was distributed across the world. Projects & Operations ... Life expectancy at birth, total (years) Details. The three maps show the global history of life expectancy over the last two centuries.1. There is a lot of information in the following – rather unusual – chart. It is possible to change this chart to any other country or region in the world. When we can track a group of people born in a particular year, many decades ago, and observe the exact date in which each one of them died then we can calculate this cohort’s life expectancy by simply calculating the average of the ages of all members when they died. The New Zealand Population (Live) counter shows a continuously updated estimate of the current population of New Zealand delivered by Worldometer's RTS algorithm, which processes data collected from the United Nations Population Division.. A high Gini coefficient here means a very unequal distribution of years of life – that is, large within-country inequalities of the number of years that people live. “The Changing Relation between Mortality and Level of Economic Development”. Here we study cross-country evidence of the link between aggregate healthcare consumption and production, and health outcomes. Interestingly we then find that the life expectancy associated with a given level of real income is rising over time. But in health — and many other aspects — the world has made rapid progress. Income growth per se accounts for only 10-25% [8]. 2016. New York: Cambridge University Press. The evidence that we have for population health before modern times suggest that around a quarter of all infants died in the first year of life and almost half died before they reached the end of puberty (see here) and there was no trend for life expectancy before the modern improvement in health: In the centuries preceding this chart, life expectancy fluctuated between 30 and 40 years with no marked increase ever. In general, the commonly-used period life expectancies tend to be lower than the cohort life expectancies, because mortality rates were falling over the course of modern development. In Japan it was the highest with close to 85 years. The underlying assumption is that the force of mortality is constant within each age interval. The estimates by historian James Riley shown here suggest that there was some variation, between different world regions, but in all world regions life expectancy was well below 40 years.5. This is true for countries around the world. Today most people in the world can expect to live as long as those in the very richest countries in 1950. Here we see a positive correlation whereby countries with higher healthcare expenditure tend to live more years with disability or disease burden. We still tend to think of the world as divided as it was in 1950. Indeed, this is a common source of confusion in the interpretation of life expectancy figures: It is perfectly possible that a given population has a low life expectancy at birth, and yet has a large proportion of old people. In 1950 newborns had the chance of a longer life if they were lucky enough to be born in the right place. Chart and table of New Zealand life expectancy from 1950 to 2021. In general, we tend to see that higher-income countries tend to spend more years with disability or disease burden than at lower incomes (around 10-11 years versus 7-9 years at lower incomes). Cambridge University Press. Szreter, Simon and Graham Mooney (2003) – Urbanization, Mortality, and the Standard of Living Debate: New Estimates of the Expectation of Life at Birth in Nineteenth‐century British Cities. Notes. It’s often argued that life expectancy across the world has only increased because child mortality has fallen. Our articles and data visualizations rely on work from many different people and organizations. Given that life expectancy at birth is highly sensitive to the rate of death in the first few years of life, it is common to report life expectancy figures at different ages, both under the period and cohort approaches. United Nations - World Population Prospects, The current life expectancy for New Zealand in 2021 is, The life expectancy for New Zealand in 2020 was, The life expectancy for New Zealand in 2019 was, The life expectancy for New Zealand in 2018 was. An increase of 27 years. by Esteban Ortiz-Ospina. The US is an outlier that achieves only a comparatively short life expectancy considering the fact that the country has by far the highest health expenditure of any country in the world. Online here: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.20.3.97. I think that, even if this were true, it would be one of humanity’s greatest achievements, but in fact, this assertion is also just plain wrong. But half of the world’s population – look at India and China – made only little progress. The life expectancy for New Zealand in 2020 was 82.36 years, a 0.18% increase from 2019. Volume 31, Issue 3, pages 537–543, September 2005. Similarly, knowledge about the health effects of smoking in the middle of the twentieth century has had profound effects on behavior and on health. ... but here are the full rankings from the UN Human Development Report for 2019. The population of many of the richest countries in the world have life expectancies of over 80 years. Period life expectancy figures can be obtained from ‘period life tables’ (i.e. France. The data on the population of each country is also taken from Gapminder. Epidemiologists refer to this period in which life expectancy began to increase substantially as the “health transition”. ), Long-Term Factors in American Economic Growth, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986439-556. The most extreme case is Rwanda, where life expectancy has increased from 32 to 64 years since 1995 — which was one year after the Rwandan genocide. Without public health measures and without effective medicines diseases were killing most people at a very young age. Over the last decades this global inequality decreased. Notice that the relationship in this chart seems to follow a pattern of ‘diminishing returns’: the increase in life expectancy associated with an increase in healthcare expenditure decreases as expenditure increases. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited. Help us do this work by making a donation. It is helpful therefore to read our entries on all the many causes of death, from infectious diseases like smallpox and malaria to non-communicable diseases like cancer. On the very right you see that in 1800 no country had a life expectancy above 40 (Belgium had the highest life expectancy with just 40 years). The arrows connect these two observations, thereby showing the change over time of both measures for all countries in the world. The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. How to read the following graph: On the x-axis you find the cumulative share of the world population. Across all four UK countries, life expectancy at age 65 years remained the same in 2015 to 2017 except for males in Northern Ireland where a decline of 0.1 years was seen. This is an updated and redrawn version of the chart published in Oeppen and Vaupel (2002) – Broken Limits to Life Expectancy. Cohort Life Expectancy - The average length of life remaining at a given age, experienced by people born in the same year. The world developed from equally poor health in 1800 to great inequality in 1950 and back to more equality today – but equality on a much higher level. At any age level in the horizontal axis, the curves in the chart mark the estimated proportion of individuals who are expected to survive that age. For 1800 (red line) you see that the countries on the left – India and also South Korea – have a life expectancy around 25. In every country the life expectancy of women is higher than the life expectancy of men as this chart shows. The country-by-country estimates for 1800 come with a considerable uncertainty and to not give a false sense of certainty I have not added these estimates into the map, but the estimates for life expectancies are considerably lower than 40 years – as is also shown for the regional and global estimates so that it is safe to assume that showing a life expectancy of less than 40 years on the map is correct. In Latin America, life evaluations rose by half a point to 2013, and have fallen slightly more than that since, while in the North America plus Australia and New Zealand group, with population dominated by the United States, life evaluations have fallen by roughly 0.3 points from the beginning to the end of the period. You can hover the mouse over a country to display the corresponding estimate. A possible explanation for this changing relationship is that scientific understanding and technological progress makes some very efficient public health interventions – such as vaccinations, hygiene measures, oral rehydration therapy, and public health measures – cheaper and brings these more and more into the reach of populations with lower and lower incomes. You can think of life expectancy in particular year as the age a person born in that year would expect to live if the average age of death did not change over their lifetime. Backlinks from other websites and blogs are the lifeblood of our site and are our primary source of new traffic. In this chart we see the breakdown of deaths by age bracket. At the time of writing, data beyond 2014 are only available as projections. The world map shows the latest data published by the United Nations for life expectancy. Compare your country to every country in the world. It is true that there has been an increase for most countries in both aspects. For Japan, we can see that life expectancy in 2005 was 82.3 years. It is of course not possible to know this metric before all members of the cohort have died. Of the top 10 countries for highest life expectancy, four were in Europe and four were in Asia. 79.4. Difference between female and male life expectancy at age 45, Difference between male and female life expectancy, Difference in female and male life expectancy at birth, Differences in life expectancy are more regional than national, Expected years of living with disability or disease burden, Extreme poverty (headcount ratio) vs Life expectancy at birth, Female minus male life expectancy vs. Non-communicable disease death rates, Healthy life expectancy and years lived with disability, Healthy life expectancy vs. Health expenditure per capita, Life expectancy of women vs life expectancy of men, Share of men and women expected to survive to the age of 65, Years lived with disability vs. Health expenditure per capita, global average life expectancy of 72.6 years, Share that is expected to survive to the age of 65, by sex, inequality in the distribution of incomes, World map of the current inequality in life expectancy, Inequality in life expectancy vs. health expenditure per capita, between life expectancy and per capita income, the (period) global life expectancy at age 10 in 2005 was 63.6 years, Here is an example of a life table from the US, historical estimates of life expectancy across world regions, statistical information on mortality and life expectancy, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.20.3.97. We have provided a few examples below that you can copy and paste to your site: Your image export is now complete. And those that survived often died soon after. For instance, we can see that in the mid-1800s, Norway had the highest life expectancy, but then by 1880 people in non-Maori New Zealand were expected to live the longest lives. In addition to the paper cited before he is also the author of Riley (2001) – Rising Life Expectancy: A Global History. The solid horizontal line represents the results of the linear regression on all these points; remarkably, the maximum life expectancy seems to follow this linear trend very closely. Explore it thru thousands of pages of Maps, Charts and feature stories. One of the most important inputs to health is healthcare. The same is true for any higher age cut-off. This means the proportional highest gains are achieved in poor countries with low baseline levels of spending. If economic development was the only determinant of health countries then we would see a steady relationship between the two metrics and the curve would not shift over time. The data on life expectancy is taken from Version 7 of the dataset published by Gapminder. Male life expectancy … The debate about how living conditions changed then is still very much alive today,14 but what is clear however from this research is that rising prosperity itself is not sufficient to improvements in health. This included a high childhood mortality rate which has steadily declined from 43% in 1800 to 3% in 2019. Many aspects had to change for life expectancy to double. And looking at the change over time, we see that as countries spend more on health, life expectancy of the population increases. Please check your download folder. Life expectancy is the key metric for assessing population health. Estimates suggest that in a pre-modern, poor world, life expectancy was around 30 years in all regions of the world. It tells us the average age of death in a population. Cutler, David, Angus Deaton, and Adriana Lleras-Muney – (2006) “The Determinants of Mortality.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20(3): 97-120. But many of the former developing countries have caught up and we achieved a dramatic reduction of global health inequality. 79.3. Data on GDP per capita is taken from Bolt, J. and J. L. van Zanden (2013). But elsewhere a newborn could only expect to live around 30 years. For some countries and for some time intervals, it is only possible to reconstruct life tables from either period or cohort mortality data. 1 USD equals 1.383 New Zealand dollar Population (2019 est.) The countries are color-coded by world region, as per the inserted legends. In 2017, this had declined to just under 10%. In South Korea health started to improve later still and the country achieved even faster progress than the UK and Japan; by now life expectancy in South Korea has surpassed life expectancy in the UK. Preston, for example, having modelled the relative contribution of economic factors to increases in life expectancy during the 20th century, concluded that factors exogenous to a country’s current level of income could account for up to 90% of the growth in life expectancy between the 1930s and the 1960s. In the early 19th century, life expectancy started to increase in the early industrialized countries while it stayed low in the rest of the world. The historical estimates are associated with a considerable uncertainty – it is worth reading the work by Riley to understand the limitations and strengths of the estimates.6 But of course these uncertainties are much smaller than the very large increase in life expectancy since then. Population and Development Review. Mortality rates declined, and consequently life expectancy increased, for all age groups. “Life expectancy” – what does this actually mean? For example, very few of the infants born in South Africa in 2009 will die at 52.2 years of age, as per the figures in the map above. In 1990 nearly one-quarter of all deaths were in children younger than 5. The First Update of the Maddison Project; Re-Estimating Growth Before 1820. In Japan more than 83% are 70 years or older. The life expectancy is shown separately for males, and for females, as well as a combined figure. At times, even less. Komlos, J., & A’Hearn, B. Total Population: 4,935,630; Capital: Wellington; Life expectancy: 81,61 years; Highest Mountain: Aoraki Mount Cook (3724 meters) NOTE: All 2020 and later data are UN projections and DO NOT include any impacts of the COVID-19 virus. 76.0 . In Japan health started to improve later, but the country caught up quickly with the UK and surpassed it in the late 1960s. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics using World Health Organisation data. Since 1900 the global average life expectancy has more than doubled and is now above 70 years. In recent decades all regions of the world made very substantial progress, and it were those regions that were worst-off in 1950 that achieved the biggest progress since then. This is the version updated in January 2013. By definition, life expectancy is based on an estimate of the average age that members of a particular population group will be when they die. A common criticism of the statement that life expectancy doubled is that this “only happened because child mortality declined”. James Riley (2005) – Estimates of Regional and Global Life Expectancy, 1800–2001. According to the famous research by historian and Nobel laureate Robert Fogel living conditions for most people declined during the early period of industrialization. Israel was the only Middle Eastern country in the top 20; the next closest regional country was Lebanon at rank 35. Africa as a whole had an average life expectancy of only 36 years, while people in other world regions could expect to live more than twice as long. This is shown by the yellow line. As of 2015-2020, Hong Kong has highest life expectancy at 84.63 years. Total life expectancy (both sexes) at birth for New Zealand is 80.6 years. Top three positions are occupied by Asian nations as Japan and Macao SAR is at 2nd and 3rd position, resp. Life expectancy at birth, female (years) Life expectancy at birth, male (years) Life expectancy at birth, total (years) Literacy rate, adult female (% of females ages 15 and above) Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages 15 and above) Literacy rate, youth male (% of males ages 15-24) Malaria cases reported; Mortality rate, under-5 (per 1,000) For example, the UN estimates that the (period) global life expectancy at age 10 in 2005 was 63.6 years. Good health in the rich countries and persistently bad health in those countries that remained poor. We have provided a few examples below that you can copy and paste to your site: Your data export is now complete. Now, let’s look at the change since 1950. Maddison Project Working Paper 4. The median age of a country’s population is an indicator of demographic makeup of the country and of its the population growth. It shows that In general, countries with higher GDP tend to have a higher life expectancy. As it can be seen, countries with higher expenditure on healthcare per person tend to have a higher life expectancy. As a consequence, in some instances—for example in obtaining historical estimates of life expectancy across world regions—it is necessary to combine period and cohort data. Most recently, the major life-saving scientific innovations in medical procedures and new pharmaceuticals have had a major effect, particularly on reduced mortality from cardiovascular disease. Earlier in this entry we explored the breakdown of total life expectancy between ‘healthy life expectancy’ and ‘years lived with disability or disease burden’. Globally the life expectancy increased from less than 30 years to over 72 years; after two centuries of progress we can expect to live much more than twice as long as our ancestors. But as we’ve seen, the gains go much further than this. The countries are ordered along the x-axis ascending by the life expectancy of the population. This visualization shows the cross-country relationship between life expectancy at birth and healthcare expenditure per capita. For the Australian population as a whole, life expectancy at birth is continuing to rise, increasing by 1.5 years for males and 1.2 years for females over the past 10 years. While some countries (mostly in Africa) are lacking behind. 29 (2): 231–248. 83.6. Population Studies. Life expectancy at birth is also a measure of overall quality of life in a country and summarizes the mortality at all ages. The entire book is online here on the website of Cambridge University Press. A 50-year-old, for example, could once expect to live up to the age of 71. The graph also shows that the African countries that suffered the most under the HIV/AIDS epidemic — Lesotho, Eswatini, and South Africa — experienced a decline of life expectancy from which they have not yet recovered. As we have seen here it was not only children that benefited from this progress, but people at all ages.