21 indicators · 217 countries · 156,366 observations. Each indicator is read at the most recent year that still has near-complete coverage. Neither rule works alone: child stunting's newest year has six reporters, and internet use is best covered in 1990, when nearly every country reported it as zero.
Life expectancy at birth, total (years)
read at 2024 · 2 years old
Years a newborn would live if mortality patterns at the time of its birth held unchanged for its whole life.
World median
74.7years
Countries reporting
217/ 217
Observations, all years
14.1k
The median is computed across the 217 countries reporting in 2024 — arithmetic over real values, not a published figure. Higher is better for this indicator.
How the world is spread · 2024
217 countries reporting · each bar is a count of countries, not a value · Pakistan 67.8 years
How much of the world was measured
Best year 1990 with 217 of 217 · most recent 2024 with 217. A short bar means the world did not measure, not that the value fell.
· A snapshot of current conditions projected forward, not a forecast of how long today's babies will actually live.
· Heavily pulled down by infant deaths, so it understates the remaining lifespan of someone who has already survived childhood.
What we can actually see
Coverage is wildly uneven, and that unevenness is a finding rather than a footnote. Life expectancy is near-universal; the survey-based indicators are not. Sorted by how much of the world reports at all.
Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators. Nothing here is interpolated — where a country never reported, it is absent rather than estimated. Browse every country →