Levensverwachting per land 2026

The longest and shortest lives

Monaco heads the table with a life expectancy at birth of 86.4 years in 2023, followed by Hong Kong (85.2), French Polynesia and Switzerland (both 84.1), Japan (84.0), Spain (83.9) and Italy (83.7). Malta, the Republic of Korea and Luxembourg complete a top ten in which every country is above 83 years. Japan's presence near the top is the familiar story; Korea's is newer — its life expectancy has climbed by more than ten years since the mid-1990s, one of the fastest gains among rich countries.

The shortest life expectancies are all in Africa: Nigeria (54.5 years), Chad (55.1), Lesotho and the Central African Republic (57.4), South Sudan (57.6), Somalia (58.8), Mali, Guinea, Benin and Burkina Faso, all between 60 and 61. Nigeria's figure is notable because it is the most populous country on the continent: more than 240 million people live in the country with the world's lowest life expectancy. The gap between the top and the bottom of this table is 32 years, larger than it was in 1960 in absolute terms even though every country has improved.

Regionally, the European Union averages 81.4 years, North America 78.7, Europe and Central Asia 78.4, East Asia and the Pacific 76.7, Latin America 75.6, South Asia 72.3, the Middle East and North Africa 72.1 and Sub-Saharan Africa 62.6.

Two decades of gains, and the pandemic dip

The world average has risen from 50.9 years in 1960 to 67.6 in 2000 and 73.3 in 2023. The "change since 2000" column shows where the recent gains have been concentrated, and the answer is southern and eastern Africa: Malawi has added 21.2 years since 2000, Rwanda 20.0, Zambia 19.8, Uganda 18.6 and Angola 18.1 — the largest improvements ever recorded over such a period, driven by the collapse in child mortality and the spread of HIV treatment after the epidemic's peak. Botswana and Zimbabwe, whose life expectancy fell below 50 in the early 2000s, have each regained about 17 years.

The series also records the COVID-19 pandemic: the world figure fell from 72.9 years in 2019 to 71.2 in 2021 before recovering to 73.3 in 2023. Most countries in the table have now passed their 2019 level, but not all, which is worth keeping in mind when reading the change column.

Women outlive men almost everywhere

In every country in this table, women's life expectancy is higher than men's, but the size of the gap varies enormously. It is widest in the former Soviet space — Ukraine (13.3 years in 2023), the Russian Federation (10.7), Latvia (10.0), Georgia and Belarus (9.5) — where high male mortality in middle age has been documented since the 1990s, and in the State of Palestine (11.8) in a year of war. It is narrowest in Togo (0.4 years), Nigeria (0.6), Kuwait (1.0) and Bahrain (1.3). A gap of five to six years is typical of Western Europe and North America.

Two notes on the data. The figures are World Bank World Development Indicators for the latest available year, 2023 for nearly every country, and describe the mortality of that year, not a projection; the population pyramids and the 2050 and 2100 pages on this site use United Nations projections that model future mortality separately. And the World Bank does not report Taiwan, the French overseas departments, the Channel Islands or Western Sahara, so they are missing from this ranking although their pyramids are on the site.