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Inequality in life expectancy

UNDP
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Life Expectancy

What you should know about this indicator

  • Captures the percentage of the life-expectancy index lost because years of life are not shared equally; it applies the to age-specific survival data from complete life tables.
  • This version of the Atkinson index uses an inequality aversion parameter ε equal to 1, which gives greater weight to premature mortality. The parameter defines how sensitive the index is to changes in the lower end of the distribution. In this form, the inequality measure is A = 1 - g/μ, where g is the geometric mean and μ is the arithmetic mean of the distribution.
  • Data is originally sourced from from complete life tables provided by UNDESA (2024). Mortality rates and other information are available for each age (0, 1, 2, 3, …. 100+).
  • This metric is used to estimate the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index.
Inequality in life expectancy
UNDP
The measures inequality on a scale from 0 to 1. Higher values indicate higher inequality. Inequality is measured here in terms of the number of years a newborn would live if age-specific mortality rates in the current year were to stay the same throughout its life.
Source
UNDP, Human Development Report (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 7, 2025
Next expected update
May 2026
Date range
2010–2023

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

UNDP, Human Development Report – Human Development Report

Artificial intelligence (AI) has broken into a dizzying gallop. While AI feats grab headlines, they privilege technology in a make-believe vacuum, obscuring what really matters: people's choices.

The choices that people have and can realize, within ever expanding freedoms, are essential to human development, whose goal is for people to live lives they value and have reason to value. A world with AI is flush with choices the exercise of which is both a matter of human development and a means to advance it.

Going forward, development depends less on what AI can do—not on how human-like it is perceived to be—and more on mobilizing people's imaginations to reshape economies and societies to make the most of it. Instead of trying vainly to predict what will happen, the 2025's Human Development Report asks what choices can be made so that new development pathways for all countries dot the horizon, helping everyone have a shot at thriving in a world with AI.

For more details, refer to https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/documentation-and-downloads

Retrieved on
May 7, 2025
Retrieved from
https://hdr.undp.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2025. Human Development Report 2025: A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI. New York.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has broken into a dizzying gallop. While AI feats grab headlines, they privilege technology in a make-believe vacuum, obscuring what really matters: people's choices.

The choices that people have and can realize, within ever expanding freedoms, are essential to human development, whose goal is for people to live lives they value and have reason to value. A world with AI is flush with choices the exercise of which is both a matter of human development and a means to advance it.

Going forward, development depends less on what AI can do—not on how human-like it is perceived to be—and more on mobilizing people's imaginations to reshape economies and societies to make the most of it. Instead of trying vainly to predict what will happen, the 2025's Human Development Report asks what choices can be made so that new development pathways for all countries dot the horizon, helping everyone have a shot at thriving in a world with AI.

For more details, refer to https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/documentation-and-downloads

Retrieved on
May 7, 2025
Retrieved from
https://hdr.undp.org/
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
UNDP (United Nations Development Programme). 2025. Human Development Report 2025: A matter of choice: People and possibilities in the age of AI. New York.

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Notes on our processing step for this indicator

We calculated averages over continents and income groups by taking the population-weighted average of the countries in each group. If less than 80% of countries in an area report data for a given year, we do not calculate the average for that area.

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Inequality in life expectancy”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from UNDP, Human Development Report. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.html [online resource] (archived on March 25, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

UNDP, Human Development Report (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

UNDP, Human Development Report (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Inequality in life expectancy – UNDP” [dataset]. UNDP, Human Development Report, “Human Development Report” [original data]. Retrieved April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260325-171315/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.html (archived on March 25, 2026).

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https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inequality-in-life-expectancy.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear