Key points
- Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a newborn would live if current mortality patterns stayed the same. Globally it was 73.3 years in 2023 (WHO).
- Across OECD countries it averaged 81.1 years in 2023 — from 78.4 years in the United States to 84.3 years in Switzerland (OECD Health at a Glance 2025).
- Women live longer than men in every OECD country: the gap averaged 5.2 years in 2023.
- Life expectancy describes a population, not a person. It is not a prediction for any individual.
Direct answer: Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a newborn would live if the mortality patterns of today stayed the same. Globally it was 73.3 years in 2023, according to WHO’s Global Health Estimates. Across the richer OECD countries it averaged 81.1 years in 2023 — but the range is wide, from 78.4 years in the United States to 84.3 years in Switzerland. This article explains what the number means, why it differs, and what it cannot tell you.
What life expectancy means
Life expectancy is a summary of a population’s mortality in one year. It takes the death rates at every age in that year and asks: if a newborn lived through all of those rates, how long would they live on average? It is not a forecast, and it is not a promise. If mortality improves, the next year’s figure rises; if a pandemic or a drug crisis hits, it falls.
Two things follow. First, the number describes a group — a country, a region, women or men — never a person. Second, it is sensitive to deaths at young ages: a country where many children die, or where many young adults die, records a much lower figure than a country where most deaths happen late in life, even if older people live just as long in both.
Life expectancy by country
The table below uses OECD Health at a Glance 2025, the most recent comparable edition, checked 7 November 2026. All figures are life expectancy at birth in 2023, in years.
| Country | Life expectancy, 2023 |
|---|---|
| Switzerland | 84.3 |
| Japan | 84.1 |
| Spain | 84.0 |
| France | 83.0 |
| Australia | 83.0 |
| Canada | 81.7 |
| Germany | 81.1 |
| United Kingdom | 81.0 |
| United States | 78.4 |
| OECD average | 81.1 |
| World (WHO) | 73.3 |
Switzerland, Japan and Spain lead a group of 27 OECD countries where life expectancy exceeded 80 years in 2023. The United States sits below that group at 78.4 years. The world figure of 73.3 years is lower still, because it includes countries where child mortality and infectious disease still cut lives short.
Why it differs between countries
No single factor explains the gaps. The OECD’s own analysis points to a mix: income and education, smoking, alcohol and obesity, air pollution, and how easily people can reach good care. Social determinants matter as much as hospitals — the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age shape the pattern, as the guide on social determinants explains.
Spending is part of the story but not the whole of it. The United States spends far more on health than any other OECD country — 17.2% of GDP in 2024 — yet records the lowest life expectancy of the countries in the table. Japan spends 10.6% of GDP and records 84.1 years. More spending does not by itself buy more years; what the money is spent on, and who it reaches, matters too.
The gender gap
Women live longer than men in every OECD country. The gap averaged 5.2 years in 2023: life expectancy at birth was 83.7 years for women, compared with 78.5 years for men. The gap is widest where men die younger from preventable causes — including smoking, alcohol, road deaths and, in the United States and Canada, drug-related poisoning among working-age adults.
What moved it recently
The pandemic cut global life expectancy by 1.8 years between 2019 and 2021, according to WHO’s World Health Statistics 2025 — the sharpest fall in decades. By 2023 the global figure had recovered to 73.3 years, close to the 73.4 years recorded in 2019. But recovery is uneven: life expectancy in 2023 was still below pre-pandemic levels in 13 OECD countries.
Longer trends still point upward in most of the world. The gains of the last century came less from hospitals than from clean water, sanitation, nutrition, vaccination and safer childbirth — the public-health measures that cut deaths in childhood first, and then deaths from infectious disease.
What life expectancy cannot tell you
It cannot tell you how long you will live, how healthy your later years will be, or which country has the “best” health system. A country can have a high average and still have wide gaps inside it — between rich and poor, between regions, between ethnic groups. Those gaps are the subject of the health-equity guide. And a longer life is not the same as a longer healthy life: years lived with chronic illness count in the total just as healthy years do.
Read the number as a population summary, dated and sourced — useful for comparing countries and tracking change over time, and useless as a personal prediction.
Frequently asked questions
Does life expectancy predict how long I will live?
No. It describes a whole population under current mortality patterns. It says nothing about any one person's future.
Why is life expectancy lower in some rich countries?
Income is only one factor. Diet, smoking, drug deaths, inequality, access to care and living conditions all move the number, so richer does not always mean longer-lived.
Is life expectancy still recovering from the pandemic?
Partly. Global life expectancy fell 1.8 years between 2019 and 2021, and in 2023 it was still below pre-pandemic levels in 13 OECD countries.