The data confirms a trend that has been notable for several years already. Latvians have a relatively short life expectancy on average, but the difference between men and women is about a decade.
Life expectancy in the EU rose at a relatively consistent pace until 2019, when life expectancy at birth was 81.3 years. Since then, 2020 and 2021 recorded declines in life expectancy, not least because of the Covid-19 epidemic.
In 2021, the overall life expectancy at birth in the EU was 80.1 years. The life expectancy for women in the EU stood at 82.9 years, which was 5.7 years longer than that for men, who averaged 77.2 years. At the time of their birth, women are expected to live longer in all 242 NUTS 2 regions where data is available.
The largest gender gap was recorded in Latvia, where life expectancy at birth for women was 9.8 years higher. The smallest gender gap was observed in the French outermost region of Mayotte, where life expectancy for women was 2.3 years higher than that for men.
Latvian women can expect to live to 78 years of age. Men's longevity, in contrast, is a mere 68.2 years. It probably comes as small comfort to males that there are a few regions of northern Bulgaria where their counterparts have even shorter lives.
The highest life expectancy at birth for women was in the Spanish capital region of Comunidad de Madrid (88.2 years), followed by five other regions in Spain – Comunidad Foral de Navarra (87.6 years), Castilla y León (87.5 years), Cantabria (87.1 years), Galicia and País Vasco (both 87.0 years). Outside of Spain, the next highest levels of life expectancy for women at birth were reported for Rhône-Alpes in France and Provincia Autonoma di Trento in Italy (both 86.7 years).
Source datasets: demo_r_mlifexp and demo_mlexpec
The highest figure for life expectancy at birth for men in 2021, at 82.8 years, was recorded in the autonomous island region of Åland (Finland). The next highest levels were reported in two Spanish regions, Comunidad de Madrid (82.2 years) and Comunidad Foral de Navarra (81.9), and for two Swedish regions, Stockholm (82.1 years) and Småland med öarna (81.9 years).
Source datasets: demo_r_mlifexp and demo_mlexpec
