// Data Analysis · April 18, 2025

LIFE EXPECTANCY AND GDP

DateApril 18, 2025
TypeData Analysis
Scope6 Countries, 2000–2015
ViaCodecademy
Overview / Goal

Economic growth often tracks with better health outcomes, but not always. This project analyzed the relationship between GDP and life expectancy across six countries (Chile, China, Germany, Mexico, United States, Zimbabwe) using WHO and World Bank data.

The goal was to uncover trends, quantify correlations, and test whether economic performance is actually associated with health outcomes : and where the pattern breaks down.

Key Findings
  • Higher GDP generally aligns with higher life expectancy across the six countries, confirmed in aggregated scatter plots and within most individual countries
  • ANOVA found statistically significant differences in mean life expectancy between countries, confirming the between-group variation is real
  • Zimbabwe is a clear outlier: normality was violated (Shapiro-Wilk), life expectancy was significantly lower than all others (Welch's t-test), yet improved sharply post-2004 despite stagnant GDP. Consistent with major public health interventions
  • The U.S. tells the opposite story: GDP rises strongly but life expectancy slows and stagnates in later years, pointing to health system and behavioral factors that GDP alone can't explain
Methods / Process

Data was loaded from a single WHO/World Bank CSV, verified for missing values and duplicates (none found), and standardized for analysis with Pandas and NumPy.

EDA covered central tendency, dispersion, time-series trends, and GDP vs life expectancy scatter plots per country. Pearson correlations were computed overall and per country. Shapiro-Wilk normality checks and Levene's variance testing informed which statistical tests to apply.

Z-scores were calculated to compare country trajectories on a common scale and surface outliers. Per-country panels were used to prevent U.S. GDP scale from dominating the visualizations. All findings were framed as associations, not causal claims.

The Takeaway

GDP and life expectancy are related, but not deterministically. The strongest story in the data: targeted health interventions can deliver large life expectancy gains even without GDP growth : and rising GDP alone doesn't guarantee continued longevity gains.

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