Life Expectancy vs. Income

One of the most interesting things I saw today was an interactive map from Gapminder showing life expectancy and income level through the years. (Hat tip for putting my on to this: Subprime Blogger .) Here is the graph from 2007:

It seems as though those with more money live longer . Or maybe if you live longer you have the chance to make more money. Really, though, I can see why there might be a correlation between personal income and life expectancy. When you have a higher income, you have the ability to buy the things (like better food, medical and health care , gym memberships and more) that make it possible to live a longer life.

Of course, there are interesting things to think about when looking at this model. Many of the industrialized countries (Japan and some European countries) have longer life expectancies despite having lower incomes. Perhaps it is because people in those countries have better access to health care that is not prohibitively expensive . Qatar is an interesting outlier. It has higher personal income, but a lower life expectancy than Japan or the U.S. Could it be that the very wealthy class in Qatar skews the income, while the rest of the population skews the life expectancy? Obviously, there are a lot of conclusions one can draw from this data — and it may or may not be correct.

What do you think of this graph?