Life expectancy vs GDP per capita

Sep 13, 2021

GDP

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the overall monetary or consumer value of all finished goods and services produced within the boundaries of a nation over a given period. It acts as a large measure of overall domestic output, as a detailed scorecard of the economic health of the country. GDP is measured in US dollars.

Life Expectancy

The word “Life Expectancy” refers to how many years a person may expect to live. By definition, life expectancy is based on an estimation of the average age at which members of a given demographic group will be at death.

The data used in this project is gathered from the World Bank. This project aims to try and identify the relationship between the GDP and Life Expectancy of six countries namely, Australia, China, Germany, India, the United States of America, and Zimbabwe with the help of Data visualization.

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Life Expectancy

Life expectancy is the key metric for assessing population health. Broader than the narrow metric of the infant and child mortality, which focus solely at mortality at a young age, life expectancy captures the mortality along the entire life course. It tells us the average age of death in a population.

Estimates suggest that in a pre-modern, poor world, life expectancy was around 30 years in all regions of the world.

Life expectancy has increased rapidly since the Age of Enlightenment. In the early 19th century, life expectancy started to increase in the early industrialized countries while it stayed low in the rest of the world. This led to a very high inequality in how health was distributed across the world. Good health in the rich countries and persistently bad health in those countries that remained poor. Over the last decades this global inequality decreased. No country in the world has a lower life expectancy than the countries with the highest life expectancy in 1800. Many countries that not long ago were suffering from bad health are catching up rapidly.

Since 1900 the global average life expectancy has more than doubled and is now above 70 years. The inequality of life expectancy is still very large across and within countries. in 2019 the country with the lowest life expectancy is the Central African Republic with 53 years, in Japan life expectancy is 30 years longer.

GDP

Annual percentage growth rate of GDP at market prices based on constant local currency. Aggregates are based on constant 2010 U.S. dollars. GDP is the sum of gross value added by all resident producers in the economy plus any product taxes and minus any subsidies not included in the value of the products. It is calculated without making deductions for depreciation of fabricated assets or for depletion and degradation of natural resources.

  • World gdp growth rate for 2020 was -3.60%, a 5.93% decline from 2019.
  • World gdp growth rate for 2019 was 2.33%, a 0.7% decline from 2018.
  • World gdp growth rate for 2018 was 3.03%, a 0.25% decline from 2017.
  • World gdp growth rate for 2017 was 3.28%, a 0.67% increase from 2016.