Our World In Data Life Expectancy At Birth — Every Country, Region And The World, Annual (1543–Present)
21,565 entity-year observations of period life expectancy at birth in years for 236 countries and 29 regions, income groups and historical entities (world and continental aggregates carry OWID codes such as OWID_WRL; UN regional and income-group aggregates have no code), 1543 to 2023, from Our World in Data's life-expectancy grapher export as of 2026-09-06.
Use Cases
- Long-run development and health research
- Demographic inputs for insurance and pension models
- Country and regional comparisons of wellbeing
Methodology
Direct parse of the OWID grapher CSV export with short column names; value column renamed to life_expectancy_years, rows without a value dropped, all entities kept.
Update Schedule
Static snapshot. OWID refreshes after each UN World Population Prospects release, roughly every two years; refresh monthly.
Attribution
Source: Our World in Data (life-expectancy grapher), based on UN World Population Prospects, the Human Mortality Database and historical estimates by Zijdeman et al. and Riley; CC BY 4.0.
Schema
| name | type |
|---|---|
| entity | string |
| code | string |
| year | integer |
| life_expectancy_years | number |
Sample Data
| code | year | entity | life_expectancy_years |
|---|---|---|---|
| AFG | 1950 | Afghanistan | 28.1563 |
| AFG | 1951 | Afghanistan | 28.5836 |
| AFG | 1952 | Afghanistan | 29.0138 |
| AFG | 1953 | Afghanistan | 29.4521 |
| AFG | 1954 | Afghanistan | 29.6975 |
Get this via API
# 1. Add dAgentBase once, in any MCP client. No install, no vendor keys.
# Claude.ai / Claude Desktop: Settings -> Connectors -> Add custom connector
# Cursor / Claude Code / others: mcp.json
{
"mcpServers": {
"dagentbase": {
"url": "https://dagentbase.com/api/mcp",
"headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer dm_live_YOUR_KEY" }
}
}
}
# 2. Then ask your agent, in plain language:
# "Preview 'Our World in Data Life Expectancy at Birth — Every Country, Region and the World, Annual (1543–Present)' and, if it fits, claim it and download the files."
# Tools it will use: search_listings -> preview_listing -> purchase_listing -> get_download_urls
# 1. Add dAgentBase once, in any MCP client. No install, no vendor keys.
# Claude.ai / Claude Desktop: Settings -> Connectors -> Add custom connector
# Cursor / Claude Code / others: mcp.json
{
"mcpServers": {
"dagentbase": {
"url": "https://dagentbase.com/api/mcp",
"headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer dm_live_YOUR_KEY" }
}
}
}
# 2. Then ask your agent, in plain language:
# "Preview 'Our World in Data Life Expectancy at Birth — Every Country, Region and the World, Annual (1543–Present)' and, if it fits, claim it and download the files."
# Tools it will use: search_listings -> preview_listing -> purchase_listing -> get_download_urlsone time · open license
Details
Available formats