Here is the new Gapminder World Poster showing the health and wealth of all countries in 2015!

UPDATE:
We have updated the graph with the latest Life Expectancy numbers from IHME!
See the update here

 

Click here to download. Suitable for print. This chart was produced in September 2016.

This chart shows the Life Expectancy and Income of 182 nations in the year 2015. Each bubble is a country. Size is population. Color is region.

People live longer in countries with a higher GDP per capita. Or put differently; in countries with longer lives, GDP per capita is higher. The connection between health and wealth doesn’t tell us which comes first. But one thing is clear: there are not two groups of countries, despite what many people think. Dividing the countries into two groups, developing vs. developed, is extremely misleading.

Labels make it easier to talk about groups of countries. But the labels should be relevant. So we recommend using the 4 income levels marked on the top of the chart. It’s better practice to divide the world into 4 groups and it’s better to label the levels and not the countries, because next year the members in each group will change.

Notice how none of the countries on level 4 have really short life expectancy. And none of the countries on level 1 have long life expectancies. Most people live in countries on level 2 and 3, where there are huge differences in life expectancy. For example Vietnam and Nigeria are both on level 2. Most people live in middle income levels 2 and 3 where there is a wide range in lifespans, depending on differences in how the income is used to save lives.

INTERACTIVE TOOL

A free interactive version of this chart is available online at gapminder.org/tools, which lets you play historic time series & compare other indicators.

DATA SOURCES

The chart shows last year’s numbers because it takes time for all countries to collect and publish the latest statistics.

LIFE EXPECTANCY: IHME – Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

POPULATION: UN World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision.

INCOME DATA: World Bank’s GDP per capita, PPP (constant 2011 international $), with a few additions by Gapminder. The x-axis uses a log-scale so that doubling incomes show the same distance on all levels.

INCOME LEVELS: Gapminder uses four income groups which roughly correspond to those used by the World Bank, with minor differences. The World Bank uses the indicator GNI per capita in US dollars, while Gapminder uses the indicator GDP per capita in PPP (constant 2011 international $).

CC LICENSE

Our posters are freely available under Creative Commons Attribution License. Please copy, share, modify, integrate and even sell them, as long as you mention ”Based on a free chart from www.gapminder.org”.