World Development Indicators

Life expectancy at birth, total (years)

The single most summarising development figure there is.

28 member states have a figure and no shape on this map. The outlines come from Natural Earth’s 110m dataset, which has no polygon for a state below a certain size, and almost all of these are small island or micro-states. They are not missing from the data — only from the picture: Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahrain, Barbados, Comoros, Cabo Verde, Dominica, Micronesia, Fed. Sts., Grenada, Kiribati, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Malta, Mauritius, Naoero, Palau, Singapore, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Tonga, Tuvalu, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa.

How the World Bank defines it

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.

World Bank, World Development Indicators — SP.DYN.LE00.IN, CC BY 4.0.

Each state is shown at the most recent year it reports, which is not the same year for every state. Comparing a 2025 figure with a 2019 one is comparing different years, and this table does not pretend otherwise.

Where the numbers come from

World Population Prospects, United Nations (UN), uri: UN Population Division; Statistical databases and publications from national statistical offices, National Statistical Offices (NSOs), note: Derived from male and female life expectancy at birth from sources such as statistical databases and publications from national statistical offices.; Demographic Statistics, Eurostat (ESTAT), note: Derived from male and female life expectancy at birth from sources such as Eurostat: Demographic Statistics.