In 2015, the life expectancy in Iceland was 81 years for men and 83.6 years for women.
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 age-specific mortality rates. These rates have been decreasing over the last decades. As a result, we can expect people to live longer than the calculated life expectancy shows.
This is also reflected in the long time evolution of the life expectancy, which has increased by six and four years for men and women respectively, during the last 30 years (see figure below).
Ten years averages (2005-2014) show that men in Iceland and Switzerland share the first places in Europe, with 80.2 and 80 years long life expectancy. They are followed by Sweden and Liechtenstein (79.5 years), Italy (79.4) and by Norway and Spain (78.9 years). The shortest life expectancies belong to men in Moldavia (65.6), Ukraine (64) and Russia (61.6).
According to the same ten years averages, women in France and Spain have the longest life expectancy in Europe (85.1 years). The next highest values belong to Switzerland (84.7), Italy (84.6), Liechtenstein (84.1) and Iceland (83.7 years). The lowest values are recorded in Ukraine (74.8), the Russia (74) and Moldavia (73.6 years).
Infant mortality in Iceland the lowest in Europe
In 2015, 2,178 individuals died in Iceland, 1,064 men and 1,114 women. The mortality rate was 6.6 per 1,000 inhabitants and the infant mortality rate was 1.9 per 1,000 life births.
Note
The ten years average values for life expectancy and mortality rates are based on Eurostat database.