Life Expectancy by Country: Where People Live Longest, and Why the Gap Is Not Closing

By the populationclock.org team · Published October 5, 2026 · All figures: UN World Population Prospects 2024, medium variant

The short answer

Weight every country’s life expectancy at birth by the number of people it applies to and the world figure for 2026 is about 74.0 years. In 1950 the same calculation gives about 49.2 years. Three quarters of a century added roughly 24.8 years to the average human lifespan, probably the largest single improvement in the human condition that fits in one number.

The average hides an enormous spread. Of the 237 countries and territories in the dataset, Monaco sits highest at about 86.7 years and Nigeria lowest at about 55.0, a difference of some 31.8 years. Put differently, 166 of those 237 places, holding about 73% of everyone alive, have passed the best national figure anywhere in 1950, about 71.6 years.

Where people live longest

The raw top of the ranking belongs to very small places, on populations too small to represent much. Filter to countries above 5 million people and the leaders are Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and Australia, running from about 85.9 years down to 84.3.

The threshold that used to mark the frontier is becoming ordinary. 61 countries and territories reach 80 years or more in 2026, home to about 10% of the world’s people. By 2100 the projection has 182 of them above that line, covering roughly 63% of a larger population. The median country sits at about 75.9 years today, reaches 80.0 by 2050, and 86.7 by 2100.

Where it is shortest

The bottom of the list is geographically concentrated in a way the top is not. All ten of the shortest-lived countries above 5 million people are in Africa, and the lowest figure of all belongs to Nigeria, at about 55.0 years. That is not a footnote. With 240 million people, Nigeria is one of the largest countries on earth, so the world’s lowest life expectancy is also one of its most widely experienced. More on that trajectory in Nigeria: the country rewriting the population rankings.

The projection improves the figure without changing the position: Nigeria reaches about 64.7 years by 2100 and is still last. A gain of 9.8 years over three quarters of a century is real progress that still leaves the country near today’s middle of the pack.

The gains that got us here

The improvement went overwhelmingly to the countries that started furthest behind: every one of the twenty biggest gainers since 1950 began below that year’s median of about 49.2 years. Japan went from about 59.3 years to 85.1. China moved from 43.8 to 79.0, a gain of 35.2 years, and India from 41.2 to 72.7. Those two hold about 35% of humanity between them, though they matter less to the world average than that share suggests: drop both and the world still gains 20.2 years since 1950 rather than 24.8. The improvement was close to universal, not carried by two countries.

The United States is the instructive exception among wealthy countries. It began comparatively well placed, at about 68.1 years in 1950, and has added only 11.7 years since, less than Japan, China or India. American life expectancy of about 79.8 years now ranks 64th of 237 in the dataset, and 7th among the 31 countries with more than 50 million people, behind Japan, South Korea, Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. That sits oddly beside the other American exception: its population is still projected to grow while its peers shrink, the subject of how the United States keeps growing.

The convergence that stalled

Convergence is the headline story of the last century, and it is genuine. Measured between the 10th and 90th percentile country, which no single war or tiny territory can move, the spread was about 30.3 years in 1950 and is about 18.8 now. That closing happened mostly before 2000.

From here the projection nearly freezes it: about 17.9 years in 2050 and 17.0 in 2100, under a year of narrowing across the rest of the century. Regions say the same. Africa averages about 64.8 years today against Northern America at 80.1, a gap of 15.3 years; by 2100 the extremes are Africa at 75.1 and Europe at 89.6, still 14.5 years apart. Everyone improves, roughly in parallel. The same regional split in population terms is on our continents pages.

The pace has slowed too. The fastest ten-year stretch in the estimates added about 7.0 years to the world figure, between 1960 and 1970. The slowest added about 0.3 years, between 2011 and 2021, a stretch covering the pandemic: the series records the world figure falling from about 72.9 years in 2019 to 71.3 in 2021 before recovering. Looking forward, the projection needs until about 2071, roughly 45 years, to add the next five. The easy gains, from keeping infants alive, have largely been taken.

Living longer does not mean growing

A high life expectancy looks like the mark of a growing population. The data says the opposite. Of the ten longest-lived countries above 5 million people, every one has a fertility rate below the replacement level of 2.1, and five have already passed their population peak. East Asia is the clearest case, where the longest lives in the world coincide with the steepest projected declines.

The reason is that long life changes a population’s shape rather than its size. Japan’s median age is about 49.4 years against Nigeria’s 17.9; the country where people live about 30.2 years longer is also the one holding fewer people each decade. Growth is set by births against deaths, and a population that lives long without replacing itself ages first and shrinks second. That is the subject of the world’s oldest countries.

What the number actually measures

Life expectancy at birth is the most misread statistic in demography. It is not a forecast of how long a baby born today will live. It is a summary of current death rates: the lifespan of a hypothetical person passing through this year’s mortality at every age at once. If conditions keep improving, as every projection here assumes, people born now will on average outlive their birth year’s figure.

It also says less about old age than people assume. The very low historical figures reflect children dying, not adults dropping dead in middle age, and much of the gain since 1950 came from child survival. That is why the lowest-ranked countries are the ones where that transition is least complete, and why further progress gets harder as its source runs out. Two caveats: where civil registration is incomplete the UN models mortality rather than counting it, so the bottom of the ranking is less certain than the decimal place suggests, and these are both-sexes-combined values, averaging over a gap between women and men found almost everywhere. Our methodology has the detail.

Frequently asked questions

All figures are the UN World Population Prospects 2024 medium variant. Life expectancy is at birth, both sexes combined; world and regional values weight national figures by population. A projection is a conditional statement about what follows from a set of assumptions, not a forecast.