Life expectancy at birth and the European health gradient
- Eurostat dataset
- demo_mlexpec
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- years
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2024): 81.5 years.
- Highest value: Switzerland at 84.2 years; lowest: Georgia at 74.9 years.
- Cross-country mean 80.7 years, standard deviation 2.79, coefficient of variation 3.5% across 36 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: +1.7% on a constant panel of 35 countries.
How large is the longevity gap inside the European Union? Eurostat dataset demo_mlexpec reports life expectancy at birth and the European health gradient for 36 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 81.5 years. Life expectancy at birth aggregates mortality across the entire age structure and is the most robust single summary of population health.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Switzerland (84.2), Liechtenstein (84.2), Spain (84.0), Sweden (83.8), Italy (83.7), all expressed in years. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Georgia (74.9), Bulgaria (75.8), Serbia (76.2), Latvia (76.4), Romania (76.5). The ratio between the highest and the lowest observation is 1.12, while the median country reports 82.0 years against a mean of 80.7 years.
Dispersion is narrow: the standard deviation across countries is 2.79 years, giving a coefficient of variation of 3.5%. The mean sits below the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the lower tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 35 countries reporting in both periods moved by +1.7%. The largest relative increases are observed in Lithuania (+4.6%), Albania (+3.2%), Latvia (+2.8%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Netherlands (+0.6%), Greece (+0.6%), France (+0.7%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Higher values are the policy-preferred direction for this indicator, so the countries listed at the bottom of the distribution mark the effective size of the European gap: closing it to the level of the fifth-ranked country would require the lowest performer to move by 8.80 years. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset demo_mlexpec ('Life expectancy by age and sex'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-06-04. Filter dimensions: sex=T; age=Y_LT1. Unit of measure: years. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (36 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.