Demographic research suggests that at the beginning of the 19th century no country in the world had a life expectancy over 40 years.

Over the next 150 years some parts of the world achieved substantial health improvements. A global divide opened. In 1950 the life expectancy for newborns was already over 60 years in Europe, North America, Oceania, Japan and parts of South America. But elsewhere a newborn could only expect to live around 30 years.

Globally the life expectancy increased from less than 30 years to over 70 years; after two centuries of progress we can expect to live more than twice as long as our ancestors. And this progress was not achieved in a few places. In every world region we can now expect to live more than twice as long.

The global inequalities in health that we see today also show that we can do much better.

Source: Our World in Data (link in bio)

[https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy-globally](https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy-globally)