WHO modeled estimates · World, both sexes · 2000–2023
Expected years at birth. Shaded bands show the original uncertainty ranges.
Healthy life expectancy weights years by health and disability severity, rather than counting only illness-free years.
By 2023, the point estimates were 0.1 and 0.4 years below 2019. This comparison does not establish a statistically significant difference in recovery.
Longer life and better health do not necessarily recover together. In WHO’s estimates, global life expectancy was almost back to its 2019 level by 2023. Healthy life expectancy remained further below its earlier level. Both measures had risen over the longer period shown.
The distinction is about population estimates, not the age at which one person becomes ill. A year lived with impaired health contributes less than a full healthy-equivalent year to the second measure.
More Detail, Sources and Data
Two Measures, Not Two Stages of a Life
Period life expectancy applies the mortality conditions of a given year across a hypothetical lifetime. It is not a prediction of the actual lifespan of babies born that year. Healthy life expectancy, or HALE, adjusts years lived for the severity of health loss. The gap between the measures is not a block of healthy years followed by a block of sick years.
Read the Estimates With Their Uncertainty
The lines use the same zero-to-80-year scale and show every annual point from 2000 through 2023. The bands preserve WHO’s published lower and upper bounds for each year. For 2023, life expectancy is 73.3 years [70.7–75.8] and healthy life expectancy is 62.8 years [57.9–67.4]. These are marginal uncertainty ranges, not uncertainty intervals for a change between years.
Vastkind compares the published point estimates. It does not reconstruct WHO’s population model or test whether the two recovery paths differ statistically. Overlapping ranges do not prove equality, and the point differences do not prove a significant difference. The chart does not identify the cause of the changes or measure the effect of any treatment.
| Year | Life Expectancy [Range] | Healthy Life Expectancy [Range] |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 67.1 [65.4–68.6] | 57.9 [54.0–61.4] |
| 2001 | 67.4 [65.8–69.0] | 58.2 [54.3–61.7] |
| 2002 | 67.7 [66.1–69.3] | 58.4 [54.6–62.0] |
| 2003 | 68.0 [66.4–69.6] | 58.7 [54.9–62.3] |
| 2004 | 68.4 [66.8–70.0] | 59.0 [55.1–62.6] |
| 2005 | 68.9 [67.3–70.4] | 59.4 [55.5–63.0] |
| 2006 | 69.4 [67.9–70.9] | 59.9 [56.0–63.4] |
| 2007 | 69.9 [68.3–71.4] | 60.2 [56.3–63.8] |
| 2008 | 70.2 [68.6–71.7] | 60.5 [56.6–64.1] |
| 2009 | 70.6 [69.1–72.1] | 60.9 [56.9–64.4] |
| 2010 | 71.0 [69.5–72.4] | 61.1 [57.2–64.7] |
| 2011 | 71.3 [69.8–72.7] | 61.4 [57.5–65.0] |
| 2012 | 71.7 [70.3–73.1] | 61.7 [57.8–65.3] |
| 2013 | 72.1 [70.7–73.4] | 62.0 [58.1–65.6] |
| 2014 | 72.3 [71.0–73.6] | 62.2 [58.3–65.7] |
| 2015 | 72.5 [71.1–73.8] | 62.3 [58.4–65.9] |
| 2016 | 72.7 [71.3–74.0] | 62.5 [58.6–66.1] |
| 2017 | 72.9 [71.6–74.2] | 62.7 [58.8–66.3] |
| 2018 | 73.2 [71.9–74.4] | 63.0 [59.1–66.5] |
| 2019 | 73.4 [72.1–74.5] | 63.2 [59.3–66.6] |
| 2020 | 72.7 [71.7–73.7] | 62.4 [58.7–65.8] |
| 2021 | 71.5 [70.2–72.7] | 61.4 [57.5–64.9] |
| 2022 | 72.7 [70.5–74.8] | 62.3 [57.7–66.5] |
| 2023 | 73.3 [70.7–75.8] | 62.8 [57.9–67.4] |
Original Data and Reuse
WHO, Global Health Estimates 2000–2023; Global Health Observatory indicators WHOSIS_000001 (life expectancy at birth) and WHOSIS_000002 (healthy life expectancy at birth), GLOBAL, both sexes. Both series carry the October 1, 2026 revision stamp; accessed November 7, 2026. We acknowledge the countries supplying the underlying national data, as described in WHO’s methods linked from the source page. These are global estimates, not an unweighted average of country values.
All 24 annual values and their original bounds are displayed for each indicator. Differences of 0.1 and 0.4 years are simple subtraction of the published 2019 and 2023 point estimates. The data period ends in 2023, not in the year of this chart’s publication.
Copyright remains with WHO. This editorial public-health display follows the WHO dataset terms; no unrestricted open-data license or WHO endorsement is claimed. No WHO emblem is used.
Expected years at birth · 2000–2023