In 2017, the life expectancy in Iceland was 80.6 years for men and 83.9 years for women.
Life expectancy at birth measures how long, on average, people can expect to live based on population age-specific mortality rates. These rates have decreased over the last decades so people can expect to live even longer than the calculated life expectancy shows.
During the last 30 years, life expectancy in Iceland has increased by six and four years for men and women respectively (see Figure 1).
Ten years averages (2007-2016) show that men in Iceland and Switzerland have the highest life expectancy in Europe, 80.5 years, followed by Liechtenstein (80.1 years), Sweden (79.9), Italy (79.8) and Spain and Norway (79.4 years). The shortest life expectancy for men is in Moldavia (65.8), Ukraine (65.1) and Russia (62.3).
According to the same ten year averages, women in Spain and France have the longest life expectancy in Europe, 85.5 and 85.4 years. Women in Switzerland come third (85.0) followed by Italy (84.8), Liechtenstein (84.2) and Iceland (83.9 years). The lowest values are recorded in Ukraine (75.6), Russia (74.4) and Moldavia (73.8 years).
Infant mortality in Iceland the lowest in Europe
In 2017, 2,239 Icelandic residents died; 1,124 men and 1,115 women. The mortality rate was 6.5 per 1,000 inhabitants and the infant mortality rate was 2.7 per 1,000 live births.
The infant mortality rate in Iceland was 1.7 per 1,000 live births on average over a ten year period (2007-2016), which is the lowest rate in Europe. The second lowest average (1.8) was recorded in Andorra, followed by San Marino (2.0), Finland and Slovenia (2.3) and Sweden (2.5). The highest infant mortality rates were recorded in Turkey (12.4).
The ten year average values for life expectancy and mortality rates are based on Eurostat database.