Our World
in Data
It’s Giving Season. Help us do more with a donation.
Data

Life expectancy at birth

period tables – OECD
See all data and research on:
Life ExpectancyChild & Infant Mortality

What you should know about this indicator

  • Period life expectancy is a metric that summarizes death rates across all age groups in one particular year.
  • For a given year, it represents the average lifespan for a hypothetical group of people, if they experienced the same age-specific death rates throughout their lives as the age-specific death rates seen in that particular year.

Life expectancy at birth is defined as how long, on average, a newborn can expect to live, if current death rates do not change. However, the actual age-specific death rate of any particular birth cohort cannot be known in advance. If rates are falling, actual life spans will be higher than life expectancy calculated using current death rates. Life expectancy at birth is one of the most frequently used health status indicators. Gains in life expectancy at birth can be attributed to a number of factors, including rising living standards, improved lifestyle and better education, as well as greater access to quality health services. This indicator is presented as a total and per gender and is measured in years.

Life expectancy at birth
period tables – OECD
The period life expectancy at birth, in a given year.
Source
OECD (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
October 11, 2023
Next expected update
January 2025
Date range
1960–2022
Unit
years

Explore charts that include this data

Life expectancy, source comparison

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Life expectancy at birth is defined as how long, on average, a newborn can expect to live, if current death rates do not change. However, the actual age-specific death rate of any particular birth cohort cannot be known in advance. If rates are falling, actual life spans will be higher than life expectancy calculated using current death rates. Life expectancy at birth is one of the most frequently used health status indicators. Gains in life expectancy at birth can be attributed to a number of factors, including rising living standards, improved lifestyle and better education, as well as greater access to quality health services. This indicator is presented as a total and per gender and is measured in years.

Retrieved on
October 11, 2023
Retrieved from
https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.htm
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.
OECD (2023), Life expectancy at birth (indicator). doi: 10.1787/27e0fc9d-en (Accessed on 12 October 2023)

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

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”, part of the following publication: Saloni Dattani, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Hannah Ritchie, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2023) - “Life Expectancy”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-birth-oecd [online resource]
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:

OECD (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

OECD (2023) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Life expectancy at birth – OECD – period tables” [dataset]. OECD, “Life expectancy at birth” [original data]. Retrieved December 12, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-birth-oecd