People in Madrid Live Nearly Twelve Years Longer Than in Northwest Bulgaria

Eleven years and ten months

A child born in the Comunidad de Madrid in 2024 could expect to live 85.7 years. A child born in Severozapaden, in north-western Bulgaria, could expect 73.9.

The difference is 11.8 years, and both children are born citizens of the European Union.

That gap is wider than the one between any two Member States measured nationally, because national figures average high and low regions together and regional figures do not.

The top

Madrid at 85.7 leads, followed by the two autonomous provinces of northern Italy — Bolzano and Trento, both at 85.0 — and Stockholm at 85.0.

Spanish and Italian regions dominate the upper part of the ranking. Both countries record high national life expectancy, and both have several regions above 84 years.

Madrid leads its own country, as Stockholm leads Sweden and Île de France leads France, but a capital region is not generally the longest-lived one: of the twenty Member States with at least three NUTS 2 regions the capital leads in eleven and is behind in eight, and in Ireland it is level with another of the three, and Wien is the last of Austria's nine at 81.2 years against Tirol's 83.3. Unlike regional GDP, however, life expectancy is not distorted by commuting — it is measured on the resident population and the people who live in a region are the people counted.

That makes this ranking a more direct statement about a place than the GDP one.

The bottom

Severozapaden records 73.9 years, Mayotte 74.5 and Severen tsentralen, also in northern Bulgaria, 74.9. Észak-Magyarország in northern Hungary is fourth at 75.1.

The lowest positions are held by regions in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Latvia, together with the French overseas department of Mayotte.

These are regions with low incomes, older populations remaining after outward migration, and health systems under strain. Northwest Bulgaria has been losing population for three decades, and what remains is disproportionately elderly.

The French gap

France contains the widest internal spread in the Union, on figures Eurostat publishes as provisional: Île de France at 84.6 years and Mayotte at 74.5, a difference of 10.1 years computed here.

Portugal is second at 4.0 years, between Norte and the Azores, and Belgium third at 3.9, between Vlaams-Brabant and Hainaut.

The French figure is a special case driven by an overseas department, and stating it without that context would misrepresent it. Belgium's 3.9 years is in some ways the more striking number: two adjacent provinces of a small, wealthy country, four years apart in life expectancy.

Why no EU average appears here

Eurostat publishes no EU aggregate in this regional dataset. Averaging 244 regions would give each the same weight regardless of population, producing a figure calculated here rather than taken from the source.

This study therefore quotes no EU figure and shows no reference row. The national life expectancy study on this site uses a series that does publish one.