Global age-sex-specific all-cause mortality and life expectancy estimates for 204 countries and territories and 660 subnational locations, 1950–2023: a demographic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023

Comprehensive, comparable, and timely estimates of demographic metrics—including life expectancy and age-specific mortality—are essential for evaluating, understanding, and addressing trends in population health. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how crucial timely all-cause mortality estimates are for being able to respond to changing trends in health outcomes, demonstrating a strong need for demographic analysis tools that can produce all-cause mortality estimates more rapidly using more readily available all-age vital registration (VR) data. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) is an ongoing research effort that quantifies human health by estimating a range of epidemiological quantities of interest across time, age, sex, location, cause, and risk. This study—part of the latest GBD release, GBD 2023—provides new and updated estimates of all-cause mortality and life expectancy for 1950–2023 using a novel statistical model that accounts for complex correlation structures in demographic data across age and time. ; JRC.C.5 - Clean Air and Climate