For my first dataset, I selected life expectancy data from the World Bank. I want to explore how life expectancy changed across different countries before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. I am particularly interested in understanding whether countries recovered at the same rate or whether some countries continued to experience lower life expectancy.
The dataset comes from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database.
The original dataset contains countries, regional aggregates, and separate columns for each year. I also downloaded the country metadata and indicator information to help interpret the data.
How did life expectancy change between 2019 and 2024, and which countries experienced the strongest and weakest recoveries following the COVID-19 pandemic?
The original dataset is in wide format because each year is stored in
a separate column. I plan to use pivot_longer() from the
tidyr package to convert the year columns into two
variables: Year and LifeExpectancy.
I will also use dplyr to select relevant variables,
identify missing values, and separate individual countries from regional
aggregates using the World Bank country metadata. I will keep the
original CSV unchanged and perform all transformations in R.
I plan to compare life expectancy in 2019, 2021, and 2024 to examine the decline and recovery around the pandemic. I will calculate changes in life expectancy for individual countries and compare patterns across regions and income groups.
I also plan to create line charts showing trends over time and bar charts highlighting countries with the largest declines and recoveries.
Some countries may have missing observations, especially for recent years. The dataset also includes regional and income-group aggregates, which need to be distinguished from individual countries. Additionally, changes during the pandemic cannot automatically be attributed entirely to COVID-19.
I hope to identify differences in life expectancy recovery across countries and regions and better understand how global health outcomes changed during and after the pandemic.