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Life expectancy

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Human Development Index (HDI)

What you should know about this indicator

Life expectancy is defined as the average number of years of life which would remain for males and females reaching the ages specified if they continued to be subjected to the same mortality experienced in the year(s) to which these life expectancies refer.

Life expectancy
Average number of years a newborn would live if age-specific mortality rates in the current year were to stay the same throughout its life.
Source
Leandro Prados de la Escosura (2021) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
September 8, 2023
Next expected update
September 2026
Date range
1870–2020
Unit
years

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

The economic historian Leandro Prados de la Escosura has calculated the AHDI over the last 150 years. He refers to it as the Augmented Human Development Index.

Dimensions of Augmented Human Development

In order to provide a synthetic measure of augmented human development, its different dimensions are expressed in index form,

  • life expectancy at birth as a proxy for a healthy life,
  • years of schooling as a proxy for access to knowledge,
  • liberal democracy as a proxy for freedom,
  • and discounted GDP per head as a surrogate for wellbeing dimensions other than education and health.

Life expectancy is defined as the average number of years of life which would remain for males and females reaching the ages specified if they continued to be subjected to the same mortality experienced in the year(s) to which these life expectancies refer.

Education attainment is measured by the average years of total schooling (primary, secondary, and tertiary) for the population aged 15 and over.

The Liberal Democracy Index combines the electoral democracy index and the liberal component index. The former incorporates indices of freedom of association, expression, suffrage, and clean elections. The latter includes indices of equality before the law and individual liberty, judicial constraints on the executive, and legislative constraints on the executive.

GDP per head is expressed in 1990 dollars adjusted for its purchasing power adjusted, that it, for the difference in price level across countries (the so-called Geary-Khamis [G-K] 1990 $).

Time and Spatial Coverage

Over the entire time span, 1870-2020, 115 countries are considered, and its number rises up to 121, 146, 161, and 162 countries for the samples starting in 1913, 1950, 1980, and 1990, respectively. These samples represent above 90 per cent of the world population (and practically 100 per cent after 1950).

Alert: measuring changes in the index

By how much did human development improve over the long run? Given the way in which the index has been computed, the conventional logarithmic rate of variation (as in the case of GDP per head) can be used.

Retrieved on
September 8, 2023
Retrieved from
https://frdelpino.es/investigacion/en/category/01_social-sciences/02_world-economy/03_human-development-world-economy/
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.
Prados de la Escosura, L. (2021), Augmented Human Development in the Age of Globalisation, Economic History Review.

The economic historian Leandro Prados de la Escosura has calculated the AHDI over the last 150 years. He refers to it as the Augmented Human Development Index.

Dimensions of Augmented Human Development

In order to provide a synthetic measure of augmented human development, its different dimensions are expressed in index form,

  • life expectancy at birth as a proxy for a healthy life,
  • years of schooling as a proxy for access to knowledge,
  • liberal democracy as a proxy for freedom,
  • and discounted GDP per head as a surrogate for wellbeing dimensions other than education and health.

Life expectancy is defined as the average number of years of life which would remain for males and females reaching the ages specified if they continued to be subjected to the same mortality experienced in the year(s) to which these life expectancies refer.

Education attainment is measured by the average years of total schooling (primary, secondary, and tertiary) for the population aged 15 and over.

The Liberal Democracy Index combines the electoral democracy index and the liberal component index. The former incorporates indices of freedom of association, expression, suffrage, and clean elections. The latter includes indices of equality before the law and individual liberty, judicial constraints on the executive, and legislative constraints on the executive.

GDP per head is expressed in 1990 dollars adjusted for its purchasing power adjusted, that it, for the difference in price level across countries (the so-called Geary-Khamis [G-K] 1990 $).

Time and Spatial Coverage

Over the entire time span, 1870-2020, 115 countries are considered, and its number rises up to 121, 146, 161, and 162 countries for the samples starting in 1913, 1950, 1980, and 1990, respectively. These samples represent above 90 per cent of the world population (and practically 100 per cent after 1950).

Alert: measuring changes in the index

By how much did human development improve over the long run? Given the way in which the index has been computed, the conventional logarithmic rate of variation (as in the case of GDP per head) can be used.

Retrieved on
September 8, 2023
Retrieved from
https://frdelpino.es/investigacion/en/category/01_social-sciences/02_world-economy/03_human-development-world-economy/
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.
Prados de la Escosura, L. (2021), Augmented Human Development in the Age of Globalisation, Economic History Review.

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”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Pablo Arriagada (2023) - “The Human Development Index and related indices: what they are and what we can learn from them”. Data adapted from Leandro Prados de la Escosura. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-prados-de-la-escosura [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:

Leandro Prados de la Escosura (2021) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Leandro Prados de la Escosura (2021) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Life expectancy” [dataset]. Leandro Prados de la Escosura, “Augmented Human Development Index (AHDI) - Country data”; Leandro Prados de la Escosura, “Augmented Human Development Index (AHDI) - Regional data” [original data]. Retrieved July 2, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-prados-de-la-escosura