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Data

Life expectancy

WHO

What you should know about this indicator

How is this data described by its producer - WHO?

Rationale

Life expectancy reflects the overall mortality level of a population. It summarizes the mortality pattern that prevails at the time in the remaining years of life at a certain age.

Definition

The average number of years that a person could expect to live, if he or she were to pass through the remaining years of life exposed to the sex- and age-specific death rates prevailing at the time, for a specific year, in a given country, territory, or geographic area. At birth: taking into account years lived throughout the entire life course. At age 60: taking into account years lived at age 60 years and above.

Method of measurement

Life expectancy at a specific age is derived from life tables and is based on sex- and age-specific death rates.

Method of estimation

Final estimates of age-sex-specific mortality rates for years 1990-2021 were used to compute abridged life tables for 183 WHO Member States with population of 90,000 or greater in 2021. Life expectancies at birth are reported in World Health Statistics 2024 and full life tables are available in the WHO Global Health Observatory WHO applies standard methods to the analysis of Member State data to ensure comparability of estimates across countries. This will inevitably result in differences for some Member States with official estimates for quantities such as life expectancy, where a variety of different projection methods and other methods are used. These WHO estimates of mortality and life expectancies should not be regarded as the nationally endorsed statistics of Member States, which may have been derived using alternative methodologies and assumptions.

Source
World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 22, 2026
Next expected update
May 2027
Date range
2000–2021
Unit
Years

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

World Health Organization – Global Health Observatory

The GHO data repository is WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for its 194 Member States. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Retrieved on
May 22, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/data/gho
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.
World Health Organization. 2026. Global Health Observatory data repository. http://www.who.int/gho/en/.

The GHO data repository is WHO's gateway to health-related statistics for its 194 Member States. It provides access to over 1000 indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others.

Retrieved on
May 22, 2026
Retrieved from
https://www.who.int/data/gho
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.
World Health Organization. 2026. Global Health Observatory data repository. http://www.who.int/gho/en/.

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

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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”, part of the following publication: Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2016) - “Global Health”. Data adapted from World Health Organization. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260604-074426/grapher/life-expectancy-at-birth-who-gho.html [online resource] (archived on June 4, 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:

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

World Health Organization - Global Health Observatory (2026) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Life expectancy – WHO” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “Global Health Observatory” [original data]. Retrieved June 4, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260604-074426/grapher/life-expectancy-at-birth-who-gho.html (archived on June 4, 2026).

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