WHO certifies return of life expectancy to pre-pandemic levels

In 2023 global life expectancy reached 73.3 years, a value almost coinciding with the 73.4 years recorded in 2019, before the pandemic. The news currently comes from a single source (AgenSIR), which reports data from the World Health Organization’s Global Health Estimates; no independent confirmation is available.

Healthy life expectancy, meanwhile, stood at 62.8 years, still 0.4 years below the pre-pandemic level. The near-complete recovery of overall life expectancy, accompanied by a persistent gap in the healthy life component, indicates, according to WHO data, a picture of recovery that is not yet uniform across the different dimensions of global health.

Meanwhile, the burden of non-communicable diseases continues to grow, accounting for 74% of global deaths in 2023, compared with 58% recorded in 2000. The increase of over fifteen percentage points in just over twenty years signals a structural shift in the causes of death worldwide, increasingly oriented toward chronic rather than infectious conditions.

The burden of diabetes and dementia is also growing. Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia have moved from nineteenth place among causes of death in 2000 to fifth place in 2023, with the number of deaths tripling over the same period. This is one of the most marked shifts recorded by the Global Health Estimates over the entire period considered.

WHO data therefore present a two-speed picture: on one hand, a near-complete recovery in average global life span compared with the pre-pandemic period, and on the other, a growing burden of chronic diseases and dementia, which in 2023 weigh on global mortality far more than they did in 2000.