Life expectancy at birth
years
- Published value. Native scale: years, positive.
- Transform: value (no transform).
- Goalposts (fixed for all years; 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of all observed country-years): worst = 50.9 scores 0, best = 83.2 scores 100.
- Direction: higher is better, no flip.
- Clip and scale: anything below the worst goalpost scores 0 and anything above the best scores 100; multiply by 100.
Where the numbers come from
- UN World Population Prospects (UN Population Division) underlying data — Provides the life expectancy estimates for most countries.
- National statistical offices underlying data — For some countries the World Bank derives the value from male and female life expectancy published by the national statistical office.
- Eurostat demographic statistics underlying data — Same derivation for EU member states, from Eurostat's life-expectancy tables.
Source statement as published by the data provider (verbatim)
World Population Prospects, United Nations (UN), uri: UN Population Division; Statistical databases and publications from national statistical offices, National Statistical Offices (NSOs), note: Derived from male and female life expectancy at birth from sources such as statistical databases and publications from national statistical offices.; Demographic Statistics, Eurostat (ESTAT), note: Derived from male and female life expectancy at birth from sources such as Eurostat: Demographic Statistics.
Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life.
Every country row below has a “verify” link to this series filtered to that country, so each value can be checked against the source.
History
Countries ranked on this indicator
217 countries have a usable value for 2024 (0 carried forward from an earlier year); 0 have none within 3 years.