Australia · Life Expectancy at Birth · years

## What this measures

How many years a newborn in Australia would live if the death rates of the year of birth held for the rest of its life: period life expectancy at birth, both sexes, in years. Annual from 1960; each value is dated December 31.

## Why it matters

It is the broadest single read of a population's health, summing up infant mortality, disease, violence and access to care. It also shapes pension costs, labour supply and demand for health services.

## How to read it

Higher is longer lives. Gains of a few tenths of a year a year are normal for a healthy trend; sharp one-year drops mark crises (COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021 in many countries). Compare with the world (worldbank_wld_life_expectancy) and with other countries in the panel (country.<iso3>.life_expectancy); the U.S. and China are worldbank_us_life_expectancy and worldbank_cn_life_expectancy.

## What it does not say

It is a period measure, not a forecast: a child born today will likely live longer as death rates keep falling. It averages both sexes (women live longer almost everywhere) and says nothing about years lived in good health. Where civil registration is incomplete the values are modelled by the UN and revised with each World Population Prospects release.

## Source

World Bank, World Development Indicators, indicator SP.DYN.LE00.IN, compiled from the UN Population Division's World Population Prospects, national statistical offices and Eurostat: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN. Licence: CC BY 4.0 (the indicator's WDI License_Type). Palanor reads it with /api/cron/worldbank-sync.