OECD members - Life expectancy at birth, total (years)

The value for Life expectancy at birth, total (years) in OECD members was 79.70 as of 2020. As the graph below shows, over the past 60 years this indicator reached a maximum value of 80.29 in 2019 and a minimum value of 67.23 in 1960.

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 67.23
1961 67.62
1962 67.62
1963 67.84
1964 68.23
1965 68.35
1966 68.62
1967 68.85
1968 68.82
1969 69.02
1970 69.33
1971 69.63
1972 69.92
1973 70.12
1974 70.53
1975 70.88
1976 71.16
1977 71.53
1978 71.71
1979 72.06
1980 72.13
1981 72.49
1982 72.84
1983 72.98
1984 73.27
1985 73.41
1986 73.68
1987 73.96
1988 74.10
1989 74.36
1990 74.54
1991 74.73
1992 75.01
1993 75.12
1994 75.42
1995 75.53
1996 75.90
1997 76.24
1998 76.46
1999 76.64
2000 76.93
2001 77.23
2002 77.40
2003 77.55
2004 77.94
2005 78.06
2006 78.35
2007 78.57
2008 78.72
2009 78.98
2010 79.15
2011 79.38
2012 79.50
2013 79.66
2014 79.91
2015 79.81
2016 79.96
2017 80.00
2018 80.10
2019 80.29
2020 79.70

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