Life expectancy at birth in the European Union (EU) was estimated to be 80.9 years in 2017, reaching 83.5 years for women and 78.3 years for men, a difference of 5.2 years.
In all EU Member States, life expectancy at birth is higher for women than for men, although the size of the gap varies noticeably. The largest differences between the sexes are in Latvia (9.9 years), Lithuania (9.8 years) and Estonia (8.8 years). The smallest differences are in Sweden (3.3 years) and the Netherlands (3.2 years).
The source data are in Eurostat table demo_mlexpec.
Life expectancy at birth is the mean number of years that a person can expect to live at birth if subjected to current mortality conditions throughout the rest of their life. It is a commonly used indicator for analysing developments in mortality.
For more statistics on life expectancy in the EU, take a look at the Statistics Explained article on mortality and life expectancy statistics.
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