According to new figures from Statistics Iceland, the life expectancy in Iceland in 2016 was 80.7 years for men and 83.7 years for women. Infant mortality in Iceland in 2016 was the lowest in Europe, or 0.7 per 1,000 live births.
Life expectancy at birth measures how long, on average, people can be expected to live at a given moment in time based on the population’s age-specific mortality rates. During the past 30 years, life expectancy in Iceland has increased by six years for men and four years for women.
A look at life expectancy averages over a decade (2006-2005) shows that men in Iceland and Switzerland have the highest life expectancies in Europe, or 80.4 and 80.2 years, respectively. Those are followed by those of Liechtenstein (79.9 years), Sweden (79.7), Italy (79.6) and Spain and Norway (79.2 years). The shortest life expectancies among men can be found in Moldavia (65.6 years), Ukraine (64.3 years) and Russia (62.5 years).
Based on the same ten-year averages, women in Spain and France can expect to live the longest among European women, or 85.3 years. The women of Switzerland can on average expect to last 84.9 years, Italian women 84.7 years, the women of Liechtenstein 84.1 years and Icelandic women 83.8 years. The shortest life expectancies among European women are in Ukraine (75 years), Russia (74.6 years) and Moldavia (73.6 years).
