How much longer are humans living today? Are humans living longer today? I thought these would be interesting questions to answer so I decided to visualize change in life expectancy by country from 2000 to 2020.
The past 20 years have yielded many technological advances that continue to increase the lifespan of people all over the world. You can see that in wealthier, more developed countries, life expectancy stagnates. This can be attributed to a variety of factors, particularly issues in combatting diseases that onset late in life, like heart disease, Alzheimer's, and other diseases that appear in larger quantity in countries where more people live to be vulnerable to them. In some countries in Africa however, like Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, the life expectancy has risen dramatically as these countries are finally beginning to eradicate issues like malnutrition, curable diseases, and internal conflict that have in the past hindered life expectancy.
The pandemic could have also played a part in why life expectancy gains are not higher. It's interesting how Europe made marginal life expectancy gains while the whole of North America has been largely stagnant, which could be indicative of geographical or even geopolitical(EU vs separate countries) differences that may play a part in life expectancy.
Download the Full Data Here: