Families and longer lives
Fertility and life expectancy across countries, 1960–2020.
In many countries, longer lives accompanied smaller families. Play the years or choose one frame to compare countries. Each bubble is one country; its area represents population and its colour represents Gapminder’s world region. The axes are linear.
Explore how countries moved over six decades
Country observations every five years; bubble area represents population
Year: 2020
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Source: Based on free Gapminder data, fast-track snapshot, fertility v15, life expectancy v15 and population v8, with Gapminder’s four world regions; CC BY 4.0. This frozen extract includes entities marked un_state by Gapminder with all three measures at every selected five-year interval.
A relationship, not an explanation
These observations do not establish why fertility or life expectancy changed. A bubble combines national estimates; it cannot show the distribution within a country. A country missing a required measure is absent from that frame. The CSV retains the extracted observations so you can inspect the coverage.
Hover or focus a country for its values. Use the year control to compare snapshots, and use the table or CSV for the observations behind the marks.