A Bangladeshi baby born in 2023 can expect to live 72.7 years, according to the World Health Organization. In 2000 the figure was 65.5 years — a gain of more than seven years in a generation.
73.4 → 72.7 years
Life expectancy at birth, 2019 and 2023 (both sexes).
Progress was steady for nearly two decades, reaching 73.4 years in 2019. It then fell to 73.1 in 2020 and 72.2 in 2021, the year of the Delta wave of COVID-19, before recovering partly to 72.5 in 2022 and 72.7 in 2023. The latest estimate is still about 0.7 years below the pre-pandemic peak.
The timing coincides with the pandemic, but these are modelled estimates, not a count of deaths, and WHO’s figures for a given year can be revised as new data arrive. Life expectancy at birth is also an average: it conceals gaps between rich and poor, urban and rural, and women and men.
For policymakers, the lesson is that long-run gains in child survival and disease control can be interrupted. Sustaining them depends on resilient primary care, routine immunization and protection from the health costs that push households into poverty.
Source: WHO Global Health Observatory, Life expectancy at birth (WHOSIS_000001).