Life expectancy at birth in the EU reached 81.5 years in 2023 based on preliminary data from Eurostat, up by nearly a year from 2022 and exceeding its pre‑pandemic level in 2019 by 0.2 years (Eurostat, 2024[1]). Spain had the highest life expectancy among EU countries at 84.0 years in 2023, followed by Italy, Malta, Luxembourg, Sweden and France, with all these countries having a life expectancy exceeding 83 years. Outside the EU, Switzerland had the highest life expectancy in Europe at 84.2 years. Life expectancy in the EU in 2023 was the lowest in Bulgaria and Latvia at less than 76 years. The gap between the lowest and highest life expectancy in the EU was more than eight years (Figure 3.1).
Women continue to live many years longer than men in all EU countries – 5.3 years on average across the EU in 2023. However, the gender gap in longevity has narrowed by nearly a year since 2010 as the life expectancy of men increased more rapidly than women. The gender gap in healthy life expectancy is much smaller as women tend to spend a greater proportion of their lives with some health issues and activity limitations (see indicator “Healthy life expectancy at birth and at age 65”).
Large inequalities in life expectancy persist not only by gender but also by socio-economic status, no matter how it is measured – whether by education level, income or occupational group. For example, in France, the gap in life expectancy between men at age 35 with a university degree or the equivalent and those who have not completed secondary education was 8.0 years in the years 2020‑22. The gap between the most educated and least educated women was 5.4 years. These education gaps have remained relatively stable over the past 30 years (INSEE, 2024[2]). The education gaps in life expectancy in the Netherlands are less pronounced, but still there was a gap of 5.1 years among the most educated and least educated men at age 30 in 2021 and of 4.1 years among women.
The COVID‑19 pandemic resulted in unprecedented reductions in life expectancy in most EU countries in 2020 and 2021, but life expectancy started to bounce back in many countries in 2022 and improved further in 2023 (Figure 3.2). Compared with its pre‑pandemic level, life expectancy in 2023 was higher than in 2019 in 18 EU countries, at the same level in two countries, and lower in six countries (Austria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands). No data is available yet for Ireland for 2023.
The exact timing in the reduction in life expectancy during the pandemic varied across countries, depending on when the pandemic had the greatest impact on excess mortality. In several countries in Western and Southern Europe such as Spain, Italy and France, the mortality impact was mainly felt during the first year of the pandemic in 2020, whereas the impact in several Central and Eastern European countries was mainly felt in 2021 (Figure 3.2).
In Germany, life expectancy fell less sharply than in other Western European countries during the first year of the pandemic in 2020, but it continued to fall in 2021 and 2022 before bouncing back in 2023. The reduction in life expectancy in 2022 was not due to any surge in mortality from COVID‑19, but rather attributed to the unusually deadly wave of influenza during the winter 2022 as well as the number of deaths caused by the record-breaking heat wave in the summer 2022 in Germany (OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, 2023[3]).
Most excess deaths during the pandemic were among older people, as people aged over 65 accounted for over 85% of all COVID‑19 deaths in the EU in 2020 and 2021. This resulted in a substantial, but transient, reduction in life expectancy at age 65. Life expectancy at age 65 in the EU fell by one year between 2019 and 2021, from 20.2 years to 19.2 years, but then bounced back up to its pre‑pandemic level of 20.2 years in 2023. However, over half of the remaining years of life at age 65 are lived with some health issues and activity limitations (see indicator “Healthy life expectancy at birth and at age 65”).
