What is the average life expectancy now

Almost everyone in the world lived in extreme poverty , we had very little medical knowledge, and in all countries our ancestors had to prepare for an early death. Over the next years some parts of the world achieved substantial health improvements. A global divide opened. In the life expectancy for newborns was already over 60 years in Europe, North America, Oceania, Japan and parts of South America. But elsewhere a newborn could only expect to live around 30 years. The global inequality in health was enormous in People in Norway had a life expectancy of 72 years, whilst in Mali this was 26 years.

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. The decline of child mortality was important for the increase of life expectancy, but as we explain in our entry on life expectancy increasing life expectancy was certainly not only about falling child mortality — life expectancy increased at all ages.

Such improvements in life expectancy — despite being exclusive to particular countries — was a landmark sign of progress. It was the first time in human history that we achieved sustained improvements in health for entire populations. Many of us have not updated our world view. We still tend to think of the world as divided as it was in But in health — and many other aspects — the world has made rapid progress.

Today most people in the world can expect to live as long as those in the very richest countries in The United Nations estimate a global average life expectancy of According to the UN estimates the country with the best health in was Norway with a life expectancy of The three maps summarize the global history of life expectancy over the last two centuries: Back in a newborn baby could only expect a short life, no matter where in the world it was born. In newborns had the chance of a longer life if they were lucky enough to be born in the right place.

In recent decades all regions of the world made very substantial progress, and it were those regions that were worst-off in that achieved the biggest progress since then. The divided world of has been narrowing. 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.

And this progress was not achieved in a few places. In every world region people today can expect to live more than twice as long. The global inequalities in health that we see today also show that we can do much better. The almost unbelievable progress the entire world has achieved over the last two centuries should be encouragement enough for us to realize what is possible. This visualization shows the dramatic increase in life expectancy over the last few centuries as a line chart. For the UK — the country for which we have the longest time-series — we see that before the 19th century there was no trend for life expectancy: life expectancy fluctuated between 30 and 40 years.

Over the last years people in all countries in the world achieved impressive progress in health that lead to increases in life expectancy.

In the UK, life expectancy doubled and is now higher than 80 years. In Japan health started to improve later, but the country caught up quickly with the UK and surpassed it in the late s. 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. The chart also shows how low life expectancy was in some countries in the past: A century ago life expectancy in India and South Korea was as low as 23 years.

A century later, life expectancy in India has almost tripled and in South Korea it has almost quadrupled. You can switch to the map view to compare life expectancy across countries. This view shows that there are still huge differences between countries: people in Sub-Saharan countries have a life expectancy of less than 50 years, while in Japan it exceeds In the pre-modern, poor world life expectancy was around 30 years in all regions of the world.

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. 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.

Infectious diseases raged in all parts of the world and as we show in our entry on child mortality almost half of all children died before they reached adulthood. And those that survived often died soon after. Without public health measures and without effective medicines diseases were killing most people at a very young age. This was the reality for humanity until very recently. Life expectancy in each region of the world stayed fairly stable for most of history until humanity started to make progress against poor health just a few generations ago.

There is a lot of information in the following — rather unusual — chart. On the x-axis you find the cumulative share of the world population. And all the countries of the world are ordered along the x-axis ascending by the life expectancy of the population. On the y-axis you see the life expectancy of each country.

For red line you see that the countries on the left — India and also South Korea — have a life expectancy around On the very right you see that in no country had a life expectancy above 40 Belgium had the highest life expectancy with just 40 years.

In the life expectancy of all countries was higher than in and the richer countries in Europe and North America had life expectancies over 60 years — over the course of modernization and industrialization the health of the population improved dramatically.

Therefore the world in was highly unequal in living standards — clearly devided between developed countries and developing countries.

This division is ending: Look at the change between and ! Now it is the former developing countries — the countries that were worst off in — that achieved the fastest progress. While some countries mostly in Africa are lacking behind. But many of the former developing countries have caught up and we achieved a dramatic reduction of global health inequality.

The world developed from equally poor health in to great inequality in and back to more equality today — but equality on a much higher level. How to read the following graph: On the x-axis you find the cumulative share of the world population.

The countries are ordered along the x-axis ascending by the life expectancy of the population. Once past childhood, people would be expected to enjoy the same length of life as they did centuries ago.

This, as we will see in the data below, is untrue. Life expectancy has increased at all ages. The average person can expect to live a longer life than in the past, irrespective of what age they are. The red line shows the life expectancy for a newborn. Until the midth century a newborn could expect to live around 40 years.

At times, even less. The rainbow-colored lines show how long a person could expect to live once they had reached that given, older, age. The light green line, for example, represents the life expectancy for children who had reached age The most striking development we see is the dramatic increase in life expectancy since the midth century.

Life expectancy at birth doubled from around 40 years to more than 81 years. While England and Wales are not the only region that achieved this improvement, the last years are the only time that humanity achieved anything like this. 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.

Mortality rates declined, and consequently life expectancy increased, for all age groups. Child mortality is defined as the share of children who die before reaching their 5th birthday. We therefore have to look at the life expectancy of a five-year-old to see how mortality changed without taking child mortality into account.

This is shown by the yellow line. In a five-year-old could expect to live 55 years. Today a five-year-old can expect to live 82 years. An increase of 27 years. The same is true for any higher age cut-off. A year-old, for example, could once expect to live up to the age of Today, a year-old can expect to live to the age of A gain of 13 years. This is true for countries around the world.

Here is the data for the life expectancy of year-olds around the world. A second striking feature of this visualization is the big decline of life expectancy in It was caused by a very large global influenza epidemic, the Spanish flu pandemic. Yes, the decline of child mortality matters a lot for life expectancy.

As we have seen here it was not only children that benefited from this progress, but people at all ages. The chart here plots the survival curves for individuals in England and Wales from up to As we can see, less than half of the people born in the midth century made it past their 50th birthday. Life expectancy estimates only describe averages, these curves therefore provide an important complementary view and help us understand how the inequality of life lengths has changed over time.

In the 19th century the inequality was very large, many died at a very young age and a considerable number of people died between the age of 5 and Today the inequality is much lower, the huge majority survives the first 60 or 70 years of their life and the span at which most people die is much more compressed than it was years ago.

Related chart: Deaths by age group in England and Wales. Related chart: Share that is expected to survive to the age of 65, by sex. The following visualization shows the estimates and UN-projections of the remaining expected life years for year-olds.

The rise — best visible on the Map-view — shows that the increasing life expectancy is not only due to declining child mortality , but that mortality rates at higher ages also declined globally. In this chart we see the breakdown of deaths by age bracket. Globally fewer and fewer people die at a young age.

The age at which people die has changed significantly since Fewer people die at a young age. It could be due to culture and diet, and there may be significant environmental factors that contribute. As a group, a higher percentage of black Americans have heart disease than white Americans, according to the American Heart Association. Although the gap in life expectancy between the black and white population has begun to close — it decreased by 2.

Stress, more limited access to health care, and cultural factors all play a role, says Anderson. Hispanic Americans may have the longest life span because they are less likely to die from a number of health conditions, including cancer, heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, diabetes, and suicide , according to the CDC. The long-term increase in life expectancy over the past century is largely due to two factors. Since , gains in longevity are mostly due to advances in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, mainly heart disease and stroke.

Cardiovascular disease and cancer are the two leading causes of death in the United States, accounting for about 40 percent of total deaths. Life expectancy has actually declined slightly over the past three years, according to the CDC. Although the CDC says the trend is largely driven by drug overdose and suicide , there is another, more significant factor: the obesity epidemic.

Life Expectancy. Blood pressure , cholesterol levels , body mass index, and diabetes are established risk factors for chronic diseases like heart disease and stroke, and people who have those diseases have a shorter life expectancy. If a person has spent decades eating an unhealthy diet or being physically inactive, they may or may not have developed certain chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease.

Hispanics saw the biggest drop in life expectancy last year, followed by Black Americans. More than , Americans have died in the pandemic, including about , last year, according to the CDC.

Life expectancy for American males declined 1. Hispanic Americans usually have a longer life expectancy than non-Hispanic Black or white people, but life expectancy for Hispanics declined more than any other ethnic group last year, according to the report.

Life expectancy among all Hispanics declined by three years from Hispanic males suffered a drop of 3.