here's the methodology and sources so we're all on the same page:

Four World Bank income-group series (life expectancy at birth) pulled
live from FRED at render time. Zero hand-entered numbers.

Series (annual, 1960–2023, not seasonally adjusted):
• SPDYNLE00INHIC — High Income
• SPDYNLE00INUMC — Upper-Middle Income
• SPDYNLE00INLMC — Lower-Middle Income
• SPDYNLE00INLIC — Low Income

The shaded band is the gap between High and Low income groups.
The dashed line marks the largest single-year drop in the cross-group average (data-driven, not manually placed).

Caveats:
• These are World Bank income-group aggregates — countries move between
groups over time, so group composition is not static.
• Within-group variation is large (e.g. not all "Low Income" countries
are the same).
• Life expectancy at birth is a period measure; it reflects current
mortality rates, not a prediction of actual lifespan for anyone born today.

Sources (Public Domain — Citation Requested):
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNLE00INHIC
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNLE00INUMC
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNLE00INLMC
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SPDYNLE00INLIC

Posted by godot_lover

4 Comments

  1. Brighter_rocks on

    interesting. kinda feels like the “cheap wins” in public health already happened – vaccines, sanitation etc

  2. Always good to see things are continuing to improve. Personally I’m glad even high-income expectancy is increasing, it means we haven’t hit a plateau yet.

  3. What happened in the 60s to cause a massive jump for upper middle income countries and only those countries?