Average life expectancy at birth was 71 years in 2021, according to the most recent data available through the World Bank, marking a decline since hitting a record of 73 years in 2019.
By region, the average life expectancy was highest in Europe, with life expectancy in European Union member states averaging 80 years.
The countries with the longest expected life spans were wealthy countries in Asia and Europe, with Japan, Lichtenstein, Switzerland and South Korea all topping the list at 84 years.
Countries With the Longest Life Expectancy
| COUNTRY | AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY |
| Japan | 84 years |
| Lichtenstein | 84 years |
| Switzerland | 84 years |
| South Korea | 84 years |
| Singapore | 83 years |
| Australia | 83 years |
| Spain | 83 years |
| Norway | 83 years |
| Sweden | 83 years |
| Iceland | 83 years |
By contrast, the African nations of Chad, Nigeria and Lesotho all had a life expectancy of 53 years, the lowest among all countries.
Countries With the Shortest Life Expectancy
| COUNTRY | AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY |
| Chad | 53 years |
| Nigeria | 53 years |
| Lesotho | 53 years |
| Central African Republic | 54 years |
| South Sudan | 55 years |
| Somalia | 55 years |
| Eswatini | 57 years |
| Côte d'Ivoire | 59 years |
| Guinea | 59 years |
| Mali | 59 years |
How Does the U.S. Rank in Life Expectancy?
U.S. life expectancy was 76 years in 2021, according to data from the World Bank, ranking it approximately 60th in the world for life expectancy, behind countries like Estonia and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. fares no better among its wealthy peers, ranking 30th out of the 38 member states that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Life expectancy at birth declined sharply across the world in 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the crisis tied to a drop of 1.6 years worldwide between 2019 and 2021, according to a recent analysis.
Over that time, life expectancy decreased more significantly in the U.S. than other wealthy nations. From 2019 to 2022, average life expectancy in the U.S. decreased by 1.3 years compared to an average of 0.5 years in comparable countries, according to an analysis by KFF and the Peterson Center on Healthcare.
But even before the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy differed greatly in the U.S. compared to other countries, says Dr. Steven Woolf, professor of population health and health equity at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
“We saw life expectancy flatlining in the U.S. in the decade preceding the COVID-19 pandemic,” Woolf says. “That was a very important warning for policymakers that something needed to be done to address the root causes, or this massive death toll the U.S. was experiencing was going to widen.”
Woolf says policy decisions in the U.S. help explain why the U.S. has a shorter life expectancy than its wealthy peers, and why it saw sharper pandemic-era declines. Other wealthy democracies did not see the same stagnating life expectancies prior to the pandemic, meaning those countries “protected the health of their populations in ways that we had not done in the United States.”
