What is the Average Human Lifespan?

In 2019, the United Nations had estimated a global average life expectancy of 72.6 years. This average has not changed significantly since then. 

Human Life Expectancy by Country

If you are curious about how long you will live based on your country, the average human life expectancy can vary quite a lot. We have taken life expectancy figures based on the latest United Nations Population Division data. Obviously, there are a great many variables that determine how long a person lives, so this information uses the average lifespan of the population of each country.

How has life expectancy changed over the years?

Life expectancy has increased considerably over the last two centuries, and the average human lifespan is now considerably higher than it was in the past. For example, between the years 1500 and 1800, the average life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 30 and 40 years of age. While people back then could still reach their 70s and beyond, the average person would typically only reach what we consider middle age today. 

This began to change dramatically with the introduction of vaccinations, sanitation, and other improvements in both living conditions and medicine. This had a huge impact on child mortality rates, and more and more children managed to survive until adulthood, again driving up the average life expectancy.

Even later, the agricultural revolution in the 1950s to 1960s saw farming move to a much larger scale, introducing automation and new techniques to improve plant growth, such as fertilizers, irrigation, and selection. This greatly improved global access to food, which, again, improved life expectancy.

According to World Health Organization (WHO), global life expectancy increased more than 6 years between the years 2000 and 2019 – going from 66.8 years in 2000 to 73.4 years in 2019.

Is life expectancy continuing to rise?

Unfortunately, the increases in life expectancy seen in previous decades have not continued. In most developed countries, the signs are that it has hit a plateau and in some cases may even be backsliding due to the impact of modern lifestyles and diet. 

Perhaps most worryingly, those additional gains in lifespan aren’t always leading to more healthy years; instead, they are more years spent in a frail state or suffering from chronic age-related diseases.

According to the WHO, while healthy life expectancy (HALE) increased by 8% from 58.3 in 2000 to 63.7, in 2019, this was due to declining mortality rather than a reduction of years spent with a disability or chronic condition. In other words, the increase in HALE (5.4 years) has not kept pace with the increase in life expectancy (6.6 years).

If you are curious, you can find out more about the global causes of death here.

Can we continue the trend of increasing life expectancy but in good health?

This is something that researchers at universities and other labs are exploring. There is an emerging branch of science called rejuvenation biotechnology, or geroscience, which is seeking to delay, prevent, or even reverse age-related diseases by treating the causes of aging directly.

It seeks to make chronologically old and chronologically young people, at every physical level, indistinguishable from one another. Healthy longevity could also be a pleasant side effect of making an older person biologically younger, and life expectancy would almost certainly rise if this succeeds.

Imagine if scientists could find ways to keep our immune systems healthy and working even when we are older. Every day, our immune systems search for invading viruses, bacteria, and dangerous cancer cells and keep us safe. 

Unfortunately, as we age, our immune systems begin to fail and become increasingly poor at doing its job. This is why cancer rates and risks for many other diseases, as well as frailty, rises significantly around age 60 and beyond. Even infectious diseases such as flu, which most young people can easily shake off, can become life-threatening to an older person whose immune system no longer works properly. 

Rejuvenating the immune system could potentially prevent this from happening and help to keep us vital and healthy despite our age. This is just one example of how rejuvenation biotechnology might help us to address age-related diseases and achieve longer, healthier lives. 

Lifespan.io is a non-profit that advocates for this approach on aging. Through problem solving and engineering, humans have increased the average human lifespan, and we believe that an engineering approach applied to the causes of aging will continue to help our species make further progress.

It is our hope that in the future, with successful breakthroughs in research, increased healthy longevity and life expectancy will be something that everyone can enjoy regardless of where they live.

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