Iceland - Life expectancy at birth, total (years)

The value for Life expectancy at birth, total (years) in Iceland was 83.07 as of 2020. As the graph below shows, over the past 60 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 83.16 in 2019 and a minimum value of 73.04 in 1963.

Definition: Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life.

Source: (1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2019 Revision, or derived from male and female life expectancy at birth from sources such as: (2) Census reports and other statistical publications from national statistical offices, (3)

See also:

Year Value
1960 73.42
1961 73.50
1962 73.72
1963 73.04
1964 73.54
1965 73.87
1966 73.30
1967 73.78
1968 74.01
1969 73.78
1970 73.93
1971 73.57
1972 74.46
1973 74.45
1974 74.51
1975 75.58
1976 76.97
1977 76.37
1978 76.65
1979 76.77
1980 76.85
1981 76.52
1982 77.04
1983 76.85
1984 77.58
1985 77.60
1986 77.99
1987 77.34
1988 77.08
1989 78.14
1990 78.04
1991 77.99
1992 78.76
1993 78.93
1994 79.25
1995 77.98
1996 78.78
1997 78.89
1998 79.60
1999 79.35
2000 79.65
2001 80.69
2002 80.50
2003 80.96
2004 81.00
2005 81.50
2006 81.16
2007 81.45
2008 81.61
2009 81.75
2010 81.90
2011 82.36
2012 82.92
2013 82.06
2014 82.86
2015 82.47
2016 82.20
2017 82.66
2018 82.86
2019 83.16
2020 83.07

Development Relevance: Mortality rates for different age groups (infants, children, and adults) and overall mortality indicators (life expectancy at birth or survival to a given age) are important indicators of health status in a country. Because data on the incidence and prevalence of diseases are frequently unavailable, mortality rates are often used to identify vulnerable populations. And they are among the indicators most frequently used to compare socioeconomic development across countries.

Limitations and Exceptions: Annual data series from United Nations Population Division's World Population Prospects are interpolated data from 5-year period data. Therefore they may not reflect real events as much as observed data.

Statistical Concept and Methodology: Life expectancy at birth used here is the average number of years a newborn is expected to live if mortality patterns at the time of its birth remain constant in the future. It reflects the overall mortality level of a population, and summarizes the mortality pattern that prevails across all age groups in a given year. It is calculated in a period life table which provides a snapshot of a population's mortality pattern at a given time. It therefore does not reflect the mortality pattern that a person actually experiences during his/her life, which can be calculated in a cohort life table. High mortality in young age groups significantly lowers the life expectancy at birth. But if a person survives his/her childhood of high mortality, he/she may live much longer. For example, in a population with a life expectancy at birth of 50, there may be few people dying at age 50. The life expectancy at birth may be low due to the high childhood mortality so that once a person survives his/her childhood, he/she may live much longer than 50 years.

Aggregation method: Weighted average

Periodicity: Annual

Classification

Topic: Health Indicators

Sub-Topic: Mortality