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Life expectancy at birth updated and expanded

We have made an update of the indicator Life expectancy at birth.  To see this indicator together with Income per capita, follow this link.

The biggest change is that we now show this indicator for 155 countries back to 1800, although in most cases, the early estimates are based on a very rough model. This full dataset is not suitable for statistical analysis. Please consult the documentation for information about sources and data quality. A spreadsheet with detailed source information will be added later.

You can also see some tentative information about data quality in the graph, look for this under “For advanced users” -> “Data quality”, or use this link. Red is “very poor quality data” while blue is “very good quality data”. Read more about our data quality ranking in this previous blogpost.

Continue reading “Life expectancy at birth updated and expanded”

Data on CO2 emissions updated

Gapminder World now incorporates the latest update on carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. This update adds more recent data and makes some corrections for earlier years. Data are now available from 1751-2005.

See this example graph which shows CO2 emissions per person against income per person, with the bubble size representing total CO2 emissions.

Life expectancy expanded

We have used some additional sources to add more data to the indicator “Life expectancy at birth”. You can now follow several European countries from the 19th century and India, Sri Lanka and USA from the beginning of the 20th century. Data for Taiwan, which has previously been missing for this indicator, is now available from 1928. See Taiwan almost catch up with Australia, in both life expectancy and income. Or follow Sweden for 206 years of health history, with decreasing infant mortality and increasing life expectancy, as income also increases (income is seen as bubble color in this example).

Access to the data and information on sources can always be found (for all indicators) by clicking the symbols next to the indicator name on the axis.