Our World
in Data
Oxford Martin School logoUniversity of Oxford logoGlobal Change Data Lab logo
Data

Life expectancy at birth

UN WPP

What you should know about this indicator

  • This is — a snapshot of mortality rates in a single year. It does not follow a real generation of people; it tells you how long someone would live if the year's age-specific death rates stayed the same for the rest of their life.
  • Future values are the mean of thousands of trajectories simulated by the UN. When fitting its projection model, the UN excluded observed life expectancies for 2020 to 2023 so COVID-19's temporary impact wouldn't distort the long-run trend.
Life expectancy at birth
UN WPP
Period life expectancy at birth.
Source
UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
July 12, 2024
Date range
1950–2023
Unit
years

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

United Nations – World Population Prospects

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

Retrieved on
July 11, 2024
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

United Nations – World Population Prospects - Interim Update

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

This is an interim update containing revised medium-variant estimates and projections for Togo.

Retrieved on
March 31, 2026
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

World Population Prospects 2024 is the 28th edition of the official estimates and projections of the global population that have been published by the United Nations since 1951. The estimates are based on all available sources of data on population size and levels of fertility, mortality and international migration for 237 countries or areas. If you have questions about this dataset, please refer to their FAQ. You can also explore data sources for each country or visit their main page for more details.

This is an interim update containing revised medium-variant estimates and projections for Togo.

Retrieved on
March 31, 2026
Retrieved from
https://population.un.org/wpp/downloads/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024, Online Edition.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline
Notes on our processing step for this indicator

For ages above 0, the UN reports life expectancy as the years a person at that age has left to live. We add the starting age back so the chart shows the expected age at death — for example, a 65-year-old with 17 years remaining is shown as 82.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Life expectancy at birth”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from United Nations. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260518-090244/grapher/life-expectancy-unwpp.html [online resource] (archived on May 18, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

UN, World Population Prospects (2024) – processed by Our World in Data. “Life expectancy at birth – UN WPP” [dataset]. United Nations, “World Population Prospects”; United Nations, “World Population Prospects - Interim Update” [original data]. Retrieved May 18, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260518-090244/grapher/life-expectancy-unwpp.html (archived on May 18, 2026).

Download

Quick download

You can download the visualization as an image or download the chart data.