Life Expectancy at Birth in Haiti: 1800 to Today (and Tomorrow)

When we look at the statistics of human lives, numbers often stand in for entire worlds. In the case of Haiti, life expectancy at birth measures how many years a newborn could expect to live, given the mortality of the time and place. Every decade tells a statistical fact about the lives actually lived there, tracking the shifting horizons of human survival across three centuries from the past into projections for the future.

The historical arc moves steadily upward through generations of data. In the 1800s estimate, life expectancy stood at 30 years, creeping up by fractions of a year through the 1810s estimate, the 1820s estimate, the 1830s estimate, the 1840s estimate, the 1850s estimate, the 1860s estimate, the 1870s estimate, the 1880s estimate, and the 1890s estimate. By the 1900s estimate it reached 32 years, before accelerating through the decades of the twentieth century to reach 51 in the 1950s, 64 in the 1980s, and 75 in the 2020s, where it currently ranks #82 of 157 countries.

For someone born in Haiti, these shifting numbers define the very framework of a lifetime. Where a child born in 1900 faced an expectation of 32 years, projections show that someone born in the 2030s projection can look forward to 76.2 years, scaling upward through the decades toward a 2100s projection of 84.6 years. Keep exploring to see how these figures connect to income, schooling, and family size across generations.

Where do YOU rank among everyone ever born? →