This is a collection of lists of countries by average life expectancy at birth.
Methodology
Life expectancy equals the average number of years a person born in a given country is expected to live if mortality rates at each age were to remain steady in the future. The life expectancy is shown separately for males and females, as well as a combined figure. Several non-sovereign entities are also included in this list.
The figures reflect the quality of healthcare in the countries listed as well as other factors including ongoing wars, obesity, and HIV infections.
Worldwide, the average life expectancy at birth was 71.5 years (68 years and 4 months for males and 72 years and 8 months for females) over the period 2010â€"2015 according to United Nations World Population Prospects 2015 Revision, or 69 years (67 years for males and 71.1 years for females) for 2016 according to The World Factbook. According to the 2015 World Health Organization (WHO) data, women on average live longer than men in all major regions and in all individual countries except for Mali and Swaziland.
The countries with the lowest overall life expectancies per the WHO are Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Somalia, Swaziland, Angola, Chad, Mali, Burundi, Cameroon, and Mozambique. Of those countries, only Lesotho, Swaziland, and Mozambique in 2011 were suffering from an HIV prevalence rate of greater than 10 percent in the 15â€"49 age group.
Comparing life expectancies from birth across countries can be problematic. There are differing definitions of live birth vs stillbirth even among more developed countries and less developed countries often have poor reporting.
Taiwan's data is not included in the following WHO statistics. According to the Ministry of the Interior of Taiwan, the life expectancy of the 23.5-million Taiwanese people reached 80.2 years in 2015, up from 79.84 years in 2014. The life expectancy of Taiwanese males averaged 77.01, while that of females reached 83.62, both of which were record highs.
Hong Kong is a territory with the world's highest life expectancy according to Hong Kong Department of Health, the life expectancy reached 84.0 years in 2015 surpassing Japan's 83.7 years. With men at 81.2 years and women at 87.3 years. The data is not included in the following WHO statistics as a separate entity since Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, and is not itself a member of the WHO.
List by the World Health Organization (2015)
2015 data published in May 2016.
HALE: Health-adjusted life expectancy
List by the United Nations, for 2010â€"2015
On July 2015, the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), released World Population Prospects, The 2015 Revision. The following table shows the life expectancy at birth for the period 2010 to 2015.
List from the "GBD 2010" study
The Global Burden of Disease 2010 study published updated figures in 2012, including recalculations of life expectancies which differ substantially in places from the UN estimates for 2010 (reasons for this are discussed in the freely available appendix to the paper, pages 25â€"27, currently not available). Although no estimate is given for the sexes combined, for the first time life expectancy estimates have included uncertainty intervals.
List by the CIA (2016)
The US CIA published the following life expectancy data in its World Factbook.
List by the OECD (2013)
See also
- List of countries by hospital beds
- List of countries by intentional death rate
- List of countries by intentional homicide rate
- List of countries by suicide rate
- List of U.S. counties with shortest life expectancy
- List of U.S. states by life expectancy
- List of federal subjects of Russia by life expectancy
- List of countries by total health expenditure per capita
References
Figures are from the CIA World Factbook 2009 and from the 2010 revision of the United Nations World Population Prospects report, for 2005â€"2010, (data viewable at http://esa.un.org/wpp/Sorting-Tables/tab-sorting_mortality.htm, with equivalent spreadsheets here, here, and here).
Only countries/territories with a population of 100,000 or more in 2010 are included in the United Nations list. WHO database 2013 http://www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/EN_WHS2013_Full.pdf
External links
- Global Agewatch has the latest internationally comparable statistics on life expectancy from 195 countries.
- Life expectancy trends interactive graph
- Life expectancy interactive world map
- Global Life Expectancy (Infographic) | LiveScience