Japan has the highest life expectancy of any country, at 84.7 years at birth, followed by South Korea at 84.3 years and Andorra at 84.0 years, according to the United Nations’ World Population Prospects 2024 estimates for the year 2023. Switzerland, Australia, Singapore, Italy, Spain, France and Norway complete the top ten, every one of them above 83.3 years, against a world average of 73.2. The list below counts down from tenth place to first and explains what sits behind each figure.
What the UN’s 2023 life expectancy estimates count
Life expectancy at birth is not a forecast of how long a baby born today will live. It is the average age at death that a newborn would reach if the death rates recorded at every age in 2023 stayed fixed for the rest of its life. It therefore measures how safe a whole society is to live in, from the first week of infancy to the ninth decade, in a single number.
The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs publishes estimates for every country and territory, but the table on which this countdown is based only lists places with more than 50,000 residents. That rule removes Monaco (86.4 years, about 39,000 people) and San Marino (85.7 years), which would otherwise top the chart. It also sets aside territories that are not sovereign states: Hong Kong, at 85.5 years, has the longest-lived population of any place in the UN table, and French Polynesia and Réunion also score above several of the countries below. The countdown ranks sovereign states only.
| Rank | Country | Life expectancy at birth, 2023 (years) | Men | Women |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Japan | 84.71 | 81.69 | 87.74 |
| 2 | South Korea | 84.33 | 81.19 | 87.16 |
| 3 | Andorra | 84.04 | 82.10 | 86.11 |
| 4 | Switzerland | 83.95 | 82.01 | 85.83 |
| 5 | Australia | 83.92 | 82.10 | 85.74 |
| 6 | Singapore | 83.74 | 81.24 | 86.24 |
| 7 | Italy | 83.72 | 81.57 | 85.75 |
| 8 | Spain | 83.67 | 80.96 | 86.31 |
| 9 | France | 83.33 | 80.43 | 86.09 |
| 10 | Norway | 83.31 | 81.75 | 84.85 |
The chart makes one point plainly: the whole top ten fits inside a band of less than a year and a half. The gaps between places are measured in weeks, and a single bad influenza season can reorder them. Malta, at 83.30 years, misses tenth place by a hundredth of a year.
Nos. 10 to 8: Norway, France and Spain
10. Norway, 83.31 years. Norway’s distinguishing feature is how little its men trail its women. Norwegian men can expect 81.75 years and women 84.85, a gap of just over three years, the narrowest in the top ten. Public healthcare is universal, and the country’s 5.4 million people (2021) had a gross national income of about 70,800 international dollars a head in 2019 to pay for it. Where Norway falls behind is at the far end of life: its life expectancy at 65, at 20.75 further years, is the lowest of the ten.
9. France, 83.33 years. France has the opposite profile. Its men sit last in the top ten at 80.43 years, but French women reach 86.09, and a French 65-year-old can expect another 22.03 years, second only to Japan. The country is also home to the longest verified human life on record: Jeanne Calment, born in Arles on 21 February 1875, died there on 4 August 1997 aged 122 years and 164 days. France’s universal health system took its present shape in 1945 and now covers every citizen and legal resident through mandatory insurance funds.
8. Spain, 83.67 years. Spanish women live to 86.31 on average, the third-highest female figure in this list after Japan’s and South Korea’s. Spain runs a universal public health system and, as of 2016, ranked first in the world for organ transplants, a measure of how well its hospitals are organised. The Mediterranean diet of olive oil, vegetables, fish and legumes is often cited as a factor, and Spain shares it with its neighbour at No. 7.
Nos. 7 to 5: Italy, Singapore and Australia
7. Italy, 83.72 years. Italy has run a universal public health service, the Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, since 1978, administered region by region. Sardinia was the first place labelled a “blue zone”: a 1999 study found 13 centenarians per 100,000 people on the island, and a 2004 follow-up showed the longevity was concentrated in the mountains of Nuoro province, where locally born men outlived those in the rest of Sardinia.
6. Singapore, 83.74 years. Singapore reached the top ten with a system unlike any European model. Every working citizen and permanent resident must pay into Medisave, a compulsory medical savings account managed by the Central Provident Fund, backed by the MediShield Life insurance scheme and MediFund for those whose savings run out. Singaporean women reach 86.24 years, and a 65-year-old can expect a further 21.87.
5. Australia, 83.92 years. Australian men share the highest male life expectancy in the top ten with Andorra, at 82.10 years. Australia’s universal scheme began as Medibank on 1 July 1975 under the Whitlam government and was reinstated as Medicare by the Hawke government in 1984. The country is also the only one in the top ten outside Europe and Asia, a reminder that the list is about institutions and income rather than one region’s habits.
Nos. 4 and 3: Switzerland and Andorra in the mountains
4. Switzerland, 83.95 years. Switzerland has no free state health service at all. Instead, private health insurance is compulsory for everyone who lives in the country, and must be taken out within three months of arriving or being born. Insurers run the basic mandatory plan on a non-profit basis and earn their margins on supplementary cover. By 2015 Swiss healthcare cost 11.7% of GDP, the second-highest share in Europe, and Swiss men now live to 82.01 years.
3. Andorra, 84.04 years. Andorra is the smallest country on the list, a landlocked principality in the eastern Pyrenees between France and Spain. With about 90,000 residents it is well above the UN’s 50,000-person threshold, but its figure still rests on a small number of deaths each year, so it moves more than a large country’s would. Its men, like Australia’s, average 82.10 years, and its capital, Andorra la Vella, lies high in a Pyrenean valley.
No. 2: South Korea and a health insurance law from 1977
2. South Korea, 84.33 years. No country in the top ten has climbed faster. South Korea ranked 11th in the world for life expectancy in 2016 and now sits second among sovereign states. The turning point in healthcare came in 1977, when a revised law made health insurance mandatory. Coverage spread quickly, and by 1989, just 12 years later, national health insurance covered the entire population. In 2000 the separate insurance societies were merged into a single National Health Insurance Service.
South Korean women now live to 87.16 years, second only to Japanese women among the countries in this list. The country also has one of the lowest adult HIV prevalence rates recorded, at 0.1% of the population, and a high influenza vaccination rate among over-65s, at 80.8% in 2019. Those two numbers illustrate a broader point: the top of this list is decided less by rare medical breakthroughs than by how thoroughly ordinary preventive care reaches everyone.
No. 1: Japan at 84.7 years
1. Japan, 84.71 years. Japanese women, at 87.74 years, are the longest-lived of any sovereign state in the UN table. A Japanese 65-year-old can expect to live another 22.49 years, the highest figure in the top ten. The foundations are well documented. Japan achieved universal health insurance coverage in 1961, and patients can go to almost any clinic or hospital they choose. Obesity is rare: about 3.3% of adults in 2014. In 2015 Japan had the lowest rate of heart disease in the OECD and the lowest level of dementia in the developed world.
Japan also produces the individuals who hold longevity records. Kane Tanaka, born in 1903 in a village now part of Fukuoka on Kyushu, was the world’s oldest verified living person until her death in April 2022 at 119 years and 107 days. Okinawa Prefecture was one of the original blue zones, but the story there is a warning rather than a boast: Okinawa’s life expectancy fell substantially during the 21st century as diets and lifestyles changed. The national figure has held up because the health system, not a single island tradition, carries it. That same longevity has made Japan’s population one of the oldest on Earth, a shift traced in our guide to the population of Japan.
Beyond the top ten: Hong Kong, Monaco and a 30-year gap
If territories and micro-states were included, the list would begin with Monaco at 86.4 years and Hong Kong at 85.5, both small, dense and wealthy city populations. The UN leaves Monaco out on population grounds and lists Hong Kong as a territory of China, which is why neither appears in the countdown above.
At the other end of the same UN table, Nigeria’s life expectancy in 2023 was 54.5 years, Chad’s 55.1 and Lesotho’s 57.4. A child born in Japan can expect to outlive one born in Nigeria by roughly 30 years, and much of that gap comes from deaths in infancy and early childhood, which the top ten have almost eliminated. The world average of 73.2 years sits nearer the top of the table than the bottom.
Long lives change a country’s shape: Japan and Italy are among the places where over-65s form the largest share of the population, as our ranking of countries with the oldest populations shows. How much of each country’s result comes from its hospitals, and how much from diet, income and housing, is the harder question, and it is the one behind our separate look at which countries have the best healthcare.