Life Expectancy by Country· by country
How long a life lasts, country by country. A child born today can expect, on average worldwide, about 73.5 years across 217 countries — from Monaco’s 86.5 years down to Nigeria’s 54.6 years. This is period life expectancy at birth: a snapshot of today’s mortality, not a promise for any newborn. Women outlive men almost everywhere.
How long a life lasts, by the numbers
Color runs cobalt from shorter to longer. Pick a metric above — everyone, women, men or the gap between them — and the map and the ranked list beside it move together. The four longest-lived are labeled; hover or tap any country to read its figure.
Tap a country to read its figure.
Natural Earth 10m · Crimea shown as Ukraine · source: World Bank, CC BY 4.0
Every country, ranked
The complete table. Click a column to sort. "Women" and "men" are the World Bank’s own sex-specific series; "Gap" is women minus men, in years.
| # ▲ | Country | Life exp. | Women | Men | Gap ♀−♂ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Monaco | 86.5 yrs | 88.6 yrs | 84.6 yrs | 4.1 yrs |
| 2 |  San Marino | 85.8 yrs | 87.2 yrs | 84.3 yrs | 2.9 yrs |
| 3 |  Hong Kong | 85.4 yrs | 88.2 yrs | 82.7 yrs | 5.5 yrs |
| 4 |  Kuwait | 84.6 yrs | 85.4 yrs | 83.8 yrs | 1.6 yrs |
| 5 |  Switzerland | 84.4 yrs | 86.2 yrs | 82.7 yrs | 3.5 yrs |
| 6 |  Liechtenstein | 84.2 yrs | 86.3 yrs | 82.2 yrs | 4.1 yrs |
| 7 |  French Polynesia | 84.2 yrs | 86.6 yrs | 81.9 yrs | 4.7 yrs |
| 8 |  Andorra | 84.2 yrs | 86.2 yrs | 82.3 yrs | 4.0 yrs |
| 9 |  Sweden | 84.1 yrs | 85.6 yrs | 82.6 yrs | 3.0 yrs |
| 10 |  Japan | 84.0 yrs | 87.1 yrs | 81.1 yrs | 6.0 yrs |
| 11 |  Italy | 84.0 yrs | 86.0 yrs | 82.0 yrs | 4.0 yrs |
| 12 |  Spain | 83.9 yrs | 86.5 yrs | 81.4 yrs | 5.1 yrs |
| 13 |  Gibraltar | 83.6 yrs | 86.2 yrs | 81.0 yrs | 5.2 yrs |
| 14 |  South Korea | 83.6 yrs | 86.6 yrs | 80.8 yrs | 5.8 yrs |
| 15 |  Singapore | 83.3 yrs | 85.6 yrs | 81.2 yrs | 4.4 yrs |
What this number really means
Life expectancy at birth is a "period" measure: it takes the death rates a country records this year, at every age, and works out how long a newborn would live if those exact rates never changed. It is the single clearest summary of a population's health — but it is a snapshot of the present, not a prediction of any individual's future.
That distinction matters. A child born in Monaco today is not guaranteed 86.5 years, and a child in Nigeria is not condemned to 54.6: both figures assume today's mortality holds for a lifetime, and mortality almost always improves. What the number does capture, sharply, is how unequal survival is right now — a 31.9-year gap between the top and bottom of this list, driven mostly by child mortality, infectious disease, conflict and access to healthcare.
It also says nothing about the quality of those years, or how they are distributed within a country — averages hide wide gaps between rich and poor even inside the longest-lived nations. Read life expectancy as a powerful measure of a population's health and its inequalities, not as a lifespan anyone is promised.
Women outlive men — almost everywhere
Each dot is a country, plotting men’s life expectancy against women’s. Nearly every point sits above the diagonal: women live longer in almost every country, though the size of the gap varies widely.
How to read: each dot is a country. Further right = men live longer; higher up = women live longer. The diagonal is where the two would be equal — but almost every country sits above it, because women outlive men. The vertical distance above the line is the size of that gap.
Five numbers worth remembering
The same dataset, boiled down to the facts people actually repeat.
Where does a country stand?
Numbers land harder when one of them is a place you know.
Frequently asked questions
Which country has the highest life expectancy?
Monaco has the highest life expectancy at birth, about 86.5 years (2024, both sexes), according to World Bank data. San Marino is close behind at about 85.8 years.
What is the average life expectancy in the world?
Global life expectancy at birth was about 73.5 years in 2024 — roughly 76.0 years for women and 71.1 for men — per the World Bank's World Development Indicators.
Which country has the lowest life expectancy?
Nigeria has the lowest life expectancy on this list, about 54.6 years (2024). The shortest-lived countries are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where child mortality, infectious disease and conflict weigh heaviest.
Why do women live longer than men?
In almost every country women outlive men, by about 4.9 years worldwide. The gap comes from a mix of biology and behavior: men are more exposed to smoking, alcohol, violence and workplace and road deaths, and tend to develop heart disease earlier. The size of the gap varies a lot from country to country.
Does life expectancy mean I will live that long?
No. Life expectancy at birth is a "period" figure — it assumes today's death rates stay fixed for your whole life, which they won't. It measures the current health of a whole population, not any one person's future. Someone born today will live through decades of change in medicine, income and safety, so their real lifespan can't be read off this number.
Did COVID-19 lower life expectancy?
Yes. World life expectancy fell in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic — the first sustained global drop in decades — and fell much more sharply in some countries. It has since recovered in most places, which is why the latest figures are back above pre-pandemic levels.
How many countries are in this ranking?
This page ranks 217 countries and territories for which the World Bank reports a 2024 life-expectancy figure — nearly every economy in the world, using one consistent source so the ranking is comparable.
More, by numbers
Cite this page
CC BY 4.0Our compilation on this page — the figures as arranged, ranked and dated here — is published under CC BY 4.0. Reuse it anywhere, including commercially, with a link back. The underlying data belongs to the organizations credited below.
Us, by Numbers. "Life Expectancy by Country." https://usbynumbers.com
Sources & further reading
Every figure here is built on one open dataset: the World Bank’s life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN), with the female/male series, released under CC BY 4.0.