Demographics · Issue 02
Twenty-seven extra years of life
UN: global life expectancy at birth is 73.3 years in 2024. In 1950 it was about 46.5. Covid took a bite. The line is rising again. This is the quietest miracle on the desk.
- World life expectancy, 2024 (UN)
- 73.3
- 1950
- 46.5
- Covid dip, 2019–2021, order of
- −1.4 yr
- UN path for 2054
- 77.4
A civilisation that stopped dying young
The UN’s 2024 population page is a number so large it has gone quiet: 73.3 years, up 8.4 years since 1995, up about 27 years since 1950. Child deaths down 60% (see The greatest story never told) is most of the early lift. Adult survival, vaccines, antibiotics, fewer wars in the late twentieth century, and fewer famines did the rest. Covid showed the line can move down. Since 2022 the UN says it has returned to pre-Covid levels in nearly all countries.
Longevity is also a fiscal chart
Pair this with The grey century and Interest now costs more than the Pentagon. Extra years after 65 are extra years of pensions, of Medicare-equivalents, of housing that does not turn over. East Asia gets the extra years with almost no extra children. Africa gets more of both. The investing map is not ‘healthcare’ as a slogan. It is later-life care in the old countries and vaccines-plus-wires in the young ones.
The long view is 77, not 90
The UN’s 2054 number is 77.4, not a sci-fi 100. GLP-1s, genomics at $525, and better cancer drugs will move some national lines more than the average. Own the boring longevity stack — dialysis, hearing, joints, GLP-1 manufacturing — and do not buy a 90-year civilisation on a 73-year print.
Investing lens
Horizon 10–25 years · Educational, not advice
Longevity is already here. Own later-life care and the drugs that extend healthy years. Do not own a housing model that needs 25-year-olds in Seoul.
Where the map points
- Later-life care, devices, and hearing/vision
- Incretins and the next metabolic class
- Vaccines and primary care in young countries
- Be sceptical of 90-year life-extension equity stories
What can break it
- A new pandemic
- Healthy-year gains lag total-year gains (cost without productivity)
- Fiscal backlash against ageing entitlements
CHART does not recommend securities, funds or trades. Figures can be revised by their publishers. Do your own research and consider regulated advice before allocating capital.
Sources
Every headline number traces to a named publisher. Contextual sources inform the essay, not the key stat.
- 01CorroboratedUnited Nations2024Global Issues: Population
Life expectancy 73.3 years in 2024; 65+ outnumber children under 18 by 2080.
- 02PrimaryUnited Nations Population Division2024-07World Population Prospects 2024
Peak ~10.3 billion in the mid-2080s. Global TFR 2.25; China 1.01; more than half of countries below replacement.
- 03PrimaryUNICEF / UN IGME2026-03Under-five mortality — Child survival
Under-five mortality 93.5 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 37.4 in 2024 (−60%). 4.9 million under-five deaths in 2024 (1 in 27) vs 1 in 11 in 1990.
Keep reading
The greatest story almost no one tells
In 1990, one in eleven children died before five. In 2024 it was one in twenty-seven. The rate fell 60%. 4.9 million deaths is still an outrage. It is also 7 million fewer than 1990, every single year.
−60%
Under-five mortality since 1990
Two billion people will be over sixty
There were a billion people aged 60+ in 2020. WHO sees 1.4 billion in 2030 and 2.1 billion in 2050. By the late 2070s the 65s outnumber the children. This is the quietest force in the issue, and the one that does not mean-revert.
2.1bn
People aged 60+, 2050 (WHO)
The first drug class to bend obesity
Obesity medicines did $66 billion of list-price business in 2025. IQVIA sees $92 billion this year. WHO still expects the condition to double by 2030 — and the shots to reach fewer than one in ten who need them.
$66bn
Obesity-medicine sales, 2025
A $95 million genome, for $525
NHGRI tracked the all-in cost of sequencing a human-sized genome from $95.3 million in 2001 to $525 in May 2022. That is a 181,000-fold collapse — faster than Moore’s law by more than two orders of magnitude. Biology became a compute problem while we were watching chips.
$525
NHGRI cost per genome, May 2022