Report: Global Life Expectancy Increases, Sick People Living Longer

People throughout the world are living longer, a new study reported. The researchers added, however, that even though the global life expectancy has increased, many are living sicker lives longer.

"The world has made great progress in health, but now the challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability," said the study's lead researcher, Theo Vos, a professor at the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

For this study, the researchers examined data on global life and healthy life expectancies from 188 countries between 1990 and 2013. To measure healthy life expectancy, the team accounted for factors such as mortality, non-fatal conditions and chronic illnesses that take away from people's quality of life.

The team found that in general, global life expectancy for both sexes increased by 6.2 years, from 65.3 in 1990 to 71.5 in 2013. Healthy life expectancy had a smaller increase of 5.4 years. Both expectancies were measured at birth.

Not all countries saw increases, however. The researchers reported that certain countries, such as South Africa, Paraguay and Belarus, experienced a drop in their healthy life expectancy. For example, people from Lesotho and Swaziland who were born in 2013 are expected to life shorter lives than people who were born 20 years earlier.

In terms of rankings, people from Lesotho had the lowest healthy life expectancy in 2013 at 42-years-old. People from Japan had the highest at 73.4-years-old.

The study was published in the journal, The Lancet.