Global life expectancy reached 73.3 years in 2023, bringing it close to the 73.4 years recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic. The recovery is significant, but new worldwide health estimates also show that living longer does not necessarily mean spending more years in good health.
Recovery that is not yet complete
The 2023 figure puts average life expectancy close to its 2019 level after the disruption of the pandemic. It covers the expected years of life at birth across the world rather than the outlook for any individual person or country.
Healthy life expectancy, which adjusts the years lived for time spent in less than full health, had recovered more slowly. It stood at 62.8 years in 2023, still four-tenths of a year beneath its 2019 level. The difference matters: gains in survival can coexist with a growing need for long-term care, prevention and treatment.
The World Health Organization’s Global Health Estimates compare mortality, disability and illness across countries and regions over time. They are estimates compiled from multiple data sources, rather than a live count of every death or diagnosis. Their value lies in identifying broad changes that national health systems must plan for.
Chronic diseases reshape mortality
Non-communicable diseases accounted for 74% of deaths globally in 2023, compared with 58% in 2000. Eight of the world’s ten leading causes of death were in this group. The category includes conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dementia and some mental-health and drug-use disorders.
Cardiovascular disease remained the leading global cause of death and disease burden. Ischaemic heart disease alone was estimated to have caused about 9.5 million deaths in 2023, alongside 210 million disability-adjusted life years. That measure combines years lost through early death with years lived with ill health or disability, helping to show impact beyond mortality alone.
The shift was not limited to wealthier countries. In low-income countries, communicable diseases made up less than half of deaths for the first time in 2023. That is an important marker of changing health needs, although infectious diseases remain a major risk and the pattern will differ substantially between places.
More years, but not always healthy years
Several trends underline the pressure on health services. The risk of dying from diabetes has risen substantially since 2000, particularly in South-East Asia. Dementia moved from the nineteenth leading cause of death globally in 2000 to fifth in 2023, while estimated deaths from dementia tripled during that period.
Mental-health conditions also made a larger contribution to lost healthy life. From 2019 to 2023, the global age-standardised disability-adjusted life-year rate increased by about 20% for depressive disorders and by nearly 45% for anxiety disorders. Together, those conditions accounted for an estimated 110 million years of healthy life lost through early death and disability in 2023.
A changing map of illness
The picture is not uniform. For drug-use disorders between 2000 and 2023, the Americas recorded the largest increases in the risk of mortality and lost healthy life, while the Western Pacific recorded substantial declines. For heart disease, reductions since 2000 have been considerable in many places, but individual-level risk increased in the Western Pacific and South-East Asia regions.
The figures do not prescribe a single response. They do, however, point to a central challenge for governments and health systems: preserving the gains in longevity while reducing preventable illness and supporting people through longer lives. Better prevention, sustained treatment for chronic conditions, mental-health care and reliable local health data will all be part of that task.
