Life expectancy since 1950: who gained most, where it fell, and how it came back

The UN Population Division's estimate of life expectancy at birth covers 222 countries and territories in every year from 1950 to 2023, all but one of them from a single revision, World Population Prospects 2024, and so estimated the same way. That makes it one of the few series on this site that can be read across seventy-three years without a break in method: how far the middle moved, who gained most, where it fell and how quickly it came back. The figures are as they stood on 13 November 2026; the statistic page and the yearly tables under it are the record.

The middle moved by twenty-six years

In 1950 the middle country of the 222 read 48.548 years. By 2000 it read 70.678, and in 2023 74.630. Most of that came early: 22.130 years in the first half-century, 3.953 in the twenty-three years since. These are medians — the country in the middle of the list each year, not an average weighted by population, and not the same country from one year to the next.

The bottom of the list moved further than the middle. In 1950, 57 countries read below 40 and 119 — more than half — below 50. In 2023 no country reads below 50, and 52 read 80 or more. The lowest reading in the 2023 file, Nigeria's 54.462, is higher than the middle country's in 1950; and 144 of the 222 now read higher than the highest country did then, San Marino at 71.590.

Who gained most

Measured from 1950, the two largest gains belong to South Korea, from 22.226 to 84.329, and North Korea, from 14.202 to 73.642. Both start in a war year — 1950 is the year fighting began on the Korean peninsula — and both readings had more than doubled by 1955. Measured from 1955 instead, the largest gain is Oman's, from 31.779 to 80.031, a rise of 48.252 years; then the Maldives, from 37.012 to 81.041, and Bahrain, Yemen and Bhutan, each more than 37 years.

The middle gain across all 222 countries since 1950 is 23.949 years. The two smallest are Nauru's, 5.500 (from 56.609 to 62.109), and Lithuania's, 9.957. The next smallest belong to countries that already stood near the top in 1950: the Netherlands gained 10.717 and the United States 11.237.

Since 2000 the largest gains have moved continent. The ten largest between 2000 and 2023 are all in Africa, led by Malawi (46.170 to 67.354, a gain of 21.184), Rwanda (19.988) and Zambia (19.772). Botswana, Zimbabwe and Eswatini are among the ten — three of the countries whose readings had fallen furthest in the two decades before.

The years it collapsed

A life expectancy at birth is not a forecast. It is how long a newborn would live if one year's death rates held for a whole lifetime, which is why it falls hard in a single year of war, mass killing or famine, and comes back as hard once that year is over. The ten largest one-year falls in the file show both halves.

Country	Year	Year before	That year	Back above the year-before level
Central African Republic	2009	49.873	14.666	2011
Rwanda	1994	42.937	12.158	1998
Cambodia	1975	39.296	12.785	1979
Somalia	1991	46.896	25.418	1993
Central African Republic	2022	40.279	18.818	2023
Lebanon	1976	57.744	36.436	1977
Central African Republic	2019	52.297	31.530	2023
Bosnia and Herzegovina	1992	71.813	51.967	1996
Burundi	1972	43.172	25.777	1974
Somalia	2011	48.900	32.453	2012

Most of these are years of war, mass violence or famine in the country concerned, and Rwanda's 12.158 in 1994 and Cambodia's 12.785 in 1975 are among the lowest readings anywhere in the file. Every one of the ten came back above its year-before level, six of them within two years. Some falls run over more than one year: China's reading went from 48.834 in 1958 to 33.419 in 1960, and was back above its 1958 level in 1962.

The Central African Republic holds three of the ten rows — the three largest one-year falls anywhere since 2000 — and each time its reading was back above 46 within a year. Its line swings harder than any other in the file. The swings are not an accident of one table: the UN's separate estimates of child mortality jump in the same three years, 2009, 2019 and 2022. Neither file says what the estimates for those years rest on, so read any single year of the country's line with care, and its trend over several years with more confidence.

The slow declines

The longer setbacks look different: no single cliff, but a fall year after year and a recovery that took decades. The clearest are in southern Africa during the HIV epidemic. Eswatini fell from 61.934 in 1988 to 43.906 in 2004, and was not back above its 1988 level until 2022. Zimbabwe fell from 60.982 in 1986 to 44.525 in 2001 and passed its old level again in 2019; Botswana fell from 63.706 in 1984 to 52.210 in 2001, and passed it in 2016. Lesotho has not yet regained its 1988 reading of 59.572: it fell to 43.182 in 2006, and in 2023 reads 57.375.

Elsewhere, Russia fell from 70.062 in 1987 to 63.823 in 1994 and passed its 1987 level again in 2012. Syria fell from 73.542 in 2010 to 63.265 in 2015; in 2023 it reads 72.120, still below.

2020 and 2021

The years of the COVID-19 pandemic are the one setback almost the whole file shares. In 195 of the 222 countries the reading for 2020 or 2021 was lower than for 2019. The middle country fell from 74.196 in 2019 to 73.063 in 2020 and 72.433 in 2021 — almost exactly where it had stood in 2009, at 72.426 — and then came straight back: 74.313 in 2022 and 74.630 in 2023, above its 2019 level.

The deepest falls were in the Americas. Bolivia went from 67.820 in 2019 to 61.427 in 2021, Paraguay from 73.668 to 68.108, Mexico from 74.530 to 69.750, Peru from 76.275 to 71.596, and Ecuador from 77.286 to 72.004 in 2020. Seven of the ten largest falls are in the Americas; the other three are Armenia, Andorra and Lebanon.

By 2023, 178 of the 195 were back at or above their 2019 reading. Seventeen were not: Andorra, Dominica, Greenland, Iceland, Israel, Jamaica, Lebanon, Libya, Lithuania, Palestine, Qatar, South Sudan, Türkiye, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Vatican City and Venezuela.

Pakistan, as one case

Pakistan read 34.248 in 1950, when only 17 of the 222 countries read lower. In 2023 it reads 67.649, and 49 read lower. Its gain over the whole span, 33.402 years, is well above the middle gain of 23.949, and the distance between Pakistan and the middle country has more than halved: 14.300 years below it in 1950, 6.981 below in 2023.

Its line has two short dips before the pandemic: in 1971, when it fell from 52.943 to 49.002 and was above its 1970 level again the next year, at 53.824; and in 2005, from 63.097 to 62.416, back to 63.624 in 2006. In the pandemic years it fell from 66.729 to 65.702 in 2020, and was above its 2019 level again in 2022, at 67.417. Beside its neighbours: Pakistan read higher than India in every year from 1963 to 1993, and India has read higher since 1994; Bangladesh has read higher since 2000. In 2023 the three read 67.649, 72.003 and 74.672. Pakistan's row on the statistic page charts every year.

The gap between the highest and the lowest

In 1950 the highest reading, San Marino's 71.590 — two thousandths of a year ahead of Norway's 71.588 — stood 57.388 years above the lowest, North Korea's 14.202. In 2023 Monaco's 86.372, the highest in every year since 2009, stands 31.910 above Nigeria's 54.462: the narrowest distance between the two ends in any year of the file.

The ends are noisy, because one year of war at the bottom moves them. A steadier measure is the span of the middle half of countries, from a quarter of the way up the list to three quarters. In 1950 that half ran from 39.670 to 58.601, a span of 18.931 years. In 2023 it runs from 68.592 to 79.310, a span of 10.718. The countries have not only lived longer; they have moved closer together.

Reading the series

The UN ranks nobody on these figures; "highest" and "lowest" here are a reading of the published values. Every year is its own table, from 1950 to 2023, and every country's line is on the statistic page. All of it is the 2024 revision except Togo's rows, which come from the Population Division's interim update of January 2026, correcting a double adjustment of Togo's census counts. A future revision will restate the past as well as add a year; when it does, the pages under this piece will move and this piece will not.