Where people live longest, and shortest
A child born in Monaco can expect to live past 86. In Nigeria and Chad the figure is about 55. World Bank estimates for 2024, and what lies behind the gap.
Life expectancy at birth is an estimate of how long a baby born this year would live if death rates at every age stayed as they are now. It is not a prediction for any one person. It is a summary of a country’s health, and it is heavily affected by how many children die young.
| Country | Years | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Monaco | 86.5 |
| 2 | San Marino | 85.8 |
| 3 | Kuwait | 84.6 |
| 4 | Switzerland | 84.4 |
| 5 | Liechtenstein | 84.2 |
| 6 | Andorra | 84.2 |
| 7 | Sweden | 84.1 |
| 8 | Japan | 84 |
| 9 | Italy | 84 |
| 10 | Spain | 83.9 |
Small and wealthy at the top
The very top of the list is made up of microstates. Monaco, San Marino, Liechtenstein and Andorra are all wealthy, all small, and all have populations under 100,000. With so few people, their figures can move a lot from year to year. Among larger countries, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Italy and Spain lead, at around 84 years.
Japan was the world leader for decades. At 84.0 it is still the highest of any country with more than 100 million people. Southern Europe does well too. Italy and Spain are often credited with diets rich in vegetables, fish and olive oil, though healthcare and income matter at least as much.
| Country | Years | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nigeria | 54.6 |
| 2 | Chad | 55.2 |
| 3 | Central African Republic | 57.7 |
| 4 | South Sudan | 57.7 |
| 5 | Lesotho | 57.8 |
| 6 | Somalia | 59 |
| 7 | Mali | 60.7 |
| 8 | Guinea | 60.9 |
| 9 | Benin | 61 |
| 10 | Burkina Faso | 61.3 |
The causes of the gap
Every one of the ten countries with the lowest life expectancy is in sub-Saharan Africa. The difference between the top and the bottom of the list is about 30 years. Most of that gap comes from deaths in early childhood, from malaria, diarrhoeal disease, pneumonia and complications at birth, rather than from adults dying younger.
Conflict plays a part in several of these countries, including South Sudan, Somalia, the Central African Republic and parts of the Sahel. Lesotho is a different case. It is relatively peaceful, but it has one of the highest HIV rates in the world, which has kept its life expectancy low.
A measure that has risen almost everywhere
Even the lowest figures in this table are higher than they would have been a few decades ago. Global life expectancy has risen by more than twenty years since the middle of the twentieth century, and the fastest gains in recent decades have come in the countries at the bottom of the list. The gap between the healthiest and least healthy countries is still large, but it is smaller than it was.
The United Kingdom
Life expectancy in the United Kingdom is about 81.4 years on the World Bank’s 2024 figures. That is a few years behind the leaders and slightly below most of western Europe.
In Outrank
Life expectancy is the fourth statistic in Outrank, and it is where the closest calls happen. Among rich countries, the differences are often less than a year, so comparing, say, Norway and the Netherlands is close to a coin toss unless you know the numbers. Between regions, the gaps are big enough to be easy.
The ten most populous countries
The extremes are small countries at the top and conflict-affected countries at the bottom. The world’s biggest countries tell a more typical story.
| Country | Life expectancy (years) |
|---|---|
| China | 78.0 |
| United States | 78.9 |
| Brazil | 76.0 |
| Bangladesh | 74.9 |
| Russia | 73.4 |
| India | 72.2 |
| Indonesia | 71.3 |
| Pakistan | 67.8 |
| Ethiopia | 67.6 |
| Nigeria | 54.6 |
China and the United States are now almost level, at around 78 to 79 years, even though American incomes are several times higher. Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the table, has a longer life expectancy than India, Russia or Indonesia, a result usually credited to big falls in child mortality since the 1990s. Russia’s figure is low for a middle-income country, held down by high death rates among working-age men.
The highest and lowest in each region
| Region | Highest | Lowest |
|---|---|---|
| Europe | Monaco 86.5 | Moldova 71.3 |
| Asia | Kuwait 84.6 | Afghanistan 66.3 |
| Americas | Canada 82.1 | Haiti 65.1 |
| Africa | Tunisia 76.7 | Nigeria 54.6 |
| Oceania | Australia 83.1 | Nauru 62.3 |
The ranges inside each region are almost as striking as the gap between them. In the Americas, life expectancy in Canada is 17 years higher than in Haiti. In Oceania, Australia is more than 20 years ahead of Nauru, a few thousand kilometres away in the Pacific.
Sources and method
Statistics are the World Bank’s World Development Indicators for 2024 (population SP.POP.TOTL, land area AG.LND.TOTL.K2, population density EN.POP.DNST, life expectancy SP.DYN.LE00.IN), licensed CC BY 4.0 and retrieved on 8 October 2026. These are the figures Outrank uses. Only sovereign states with World Bank data are ranked.
Life expectancy figures for very small countries are less stable than for large ones and can change noticeably between World Bank releases.