ATLAS · COMPARE
Longevity & Infant Survival
How tightly is a long average life bound to a baby surviving its first year?
Watch a nation’s lifespan and its newborns’ odds snap into one line. The cloud tilts down to the right because the two move in opposite directions — that’s the shape of a very strong correlation.
The two, blended into one map
Same data, a different read. Instead of one metric as colour and the other as bubbles, the two blend: each country is shaded by where it falls on both at once — so the map shows where life expectancy and infant mortality are high together, and where they pull apart.
How strongly do they move together?
Across the 196 countries with both figures, life expectancy and infant mortality move in opposite directions a very strong amount — as one rises, the other tends to fall (correlation r = -0.89). That’s a clear, dependable pattern; the map below makes it visible at a glance.
Measured across the 196countries that have both figures, in each metric’s own scale. The scatter morph above plots these same countries; the dashed line is their best fit. Correlation is not causation — it only measures whether the two tend to track each other.
Two of the most-watched numbers in global health, fused. On the blend, the countries where babies survive are the same deep colour as the countries that live long — the two are almost the same map. Switch to Scatter and the dots collapse onto a tight downward line: where infant mortality is high, average lifespan is short, because so many lives are cut off in the first year. A long average life is, to a first approximation, a country that has learned to keep its newborns alive.
Who fits the pattern — and who breaks it
On the scatter, the rule-followers sit tight to the dashed line; the rule-breakers fly far from it. On the left, the countries that most clearly follow the relationship; on the right, the ones that most defy it.
| Country | Life expectancy | Infant mortality |
|---|---|---|
| Sierra Leone | 62.0 yrs | 54.6 / 1,000 |
| Mozambique | 63.8 yrs | 43.7 / 1,000 |
| Guinea-Bissau | 64.3 yrs | 42.1 / 1,000 |
| Eritrea | 68.9 yrs | 24.7 / 1,000 |
| Portugal | 82.4 yrs | 2.7 / 1,000 |
| Nigeria | 54.6 yrs | 69.8 / 1,000 |
Understand the underlying numbers
Keep exploring
GEOGRAPHY ↔ DATA
Try another pairing — watch the whole world rearrange itself by the numbers.