Pakistan, 1960: life expectancy was 44, but at 65 the expected age at death was 76
1960
Child deaths pulled the average down: 1 baby in 6 died before the age of one. Since then life expectancy has risen by 24 years, to 67.6, and life after 65 by only 2.8 years.
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Life expectancy at birth: how long a newborn would live on average at that year’s death rates. When many die as babies, the average is low although adults live to old age. Life expectancy at 65: how many more years someone who turned 65 would live on average.
Blue is life expectancy at birth; orange, expected age at death for 65-year-olds at that year’s death rates (65 plus life expectancy at 65). The shaded gap is mostly deaths of children and young people; it narrows.
- Life expectancy at birth years
44.1 (1960) → 67.6 (2023)
- Life expectancy at 65 years
11.0 (1960) → 13.8 (2023)
- Infant mortality deaths under age 1 per 1,000 live births
175.1 (1960) → 49.4 (2023)
UN estimates (World Population Prospects 2024; life expectancy at birth via the World Bank). Both come from a single year’s life table, not from what happened to real generations. Selection: the world and countries of at least 50 million where life expectancy at birth was 55 or less in 1960.
Estimates for 1960 rest on censuses and surveys rather than complete death registration in many countries.
A question for this picture
Where is life expectancy low now because of child deaths, and where because of adult deaths?