Countries by Life expectancy at birth, female (years)
Monaco ranks 1st globally for female life expectancy at birth, with newborn girls expected to live 88.5 years under 2023 mortality conditions. At the other end, Nigeria ranks 216th at 54.7 years — a gap of nearly 34 years between the top and bottom. The spread across all 216 countries reflects how widely female survival outcomes vary by geography and development level.
Ranking 2023
Values shown in years.
Analysis
This metric measures female life expectancy at birth in years. According to the source definition, life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life. The unit is years, and the figure applies specifically to female births. It does not measure actual lifespans of living individuals, nor does it account for future changes in mortality. The dataset covers 216 countries for the reference year 2023, with 100% of data points classified as official and all 216 countries reporting data from within the last seven years. Nine extreme outliers were identified using a 3-standard-deviation threshold. The full range runs from 54.7 years (Nigeria, rank 216) to 88.5 years (Monaco, rank 1), a spread of 61.7%.
The top of the ranking is concentrated in small territories and high-income East Asian and European nations. Monaco ranks 1st at 88.5 years, followed by Hong Kong SAR, China at 88.1 years (rank 2), Liechtenstein at 87.3 years (rank 3), and Japan at 87.1 years (rank 4). San Marino (rank 5, 87.1 years), Spain (rank 6, 86.7 years), and Korea, Rep. (rank 8, 86.4 years) also place in the top ten. France and Switzerland tie at rank 12 with 85.9 years. The top 30 is dominated by Western Europe, with Australia (rank 22, 85.1 years), New Zealand (rank 26, 84.9 years), and Singapore (rank 20, 85.2 years) among the non-European entrants.
The middle of the ranking shows notable variation by region. The United States ranks 64th at 81.1 years, placing it below several Gulf states including Kuwait (rank 39, 83.7 years) and Qatar (rank 43, 83.4 years). China ranks 66th at 80.9 years, and Brazil ranks 98th at 79.0 years. In sub-Saharan Africa, the rankings fall sharply: South Africa ranks 176th at 69.6 years, while Lesotho ranks 213th at 60.0 years and Chad ranks 215th at 57.0 years. Nigeria at rank 216 records the lowest value in the dataset at 54.7 years. A cluster of small island territories appears across the ranking — French Polynesia ranks 7th at 86.5 years, while Kiribati ranks 185th at 68.2 years, illustrating that island status alone does not predict high female life expectancy.
Several data limitations apply to this metric. Life expectancy at birth is a synthetic measure based on current age-specific mortality rates, not a projection of actual future survival. Countries with weaker civil registration systems may have less precise underlying mortality data, which can affect the reliability of computed values, particularly at the lower end of the ranking. Small territories such as Monaco, Liechtenstein, and Bermuda have very small populations, meaning their figures can be more sensitive to year-to-year fluctuations in a small number of deaths. The World Bank indicator SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN draws on a mix of national statistics offices and modeled estimates, and the precision implied by figures reported to three decimal places may exceed actual measurement accuracy in some cases.
Methodology
Data are drawn from the World Bank World Development Indicators, indicator code SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN, for the reference year 2023. The metric is defined as follows: life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life. The unit is years and applies to female births only. Coverage includes 216 countries, all of which report data from within the last seven years (100% recency). All 216 data points are classified as official quality (100%), exceeding the 70% threshold. Nine extreme outliers were flagged using a 3-standard-deviation threshold. The average year-over-year change across the dataset is 1.0%, well below the 50% volatility threshold. The full range is 54.74 years (Nigeria) to 88.50 years (Monaco), representing a 61.7% spread. Zero of the 216 included countries are classified as microstates with populations under one million for the purposes of coverage assessment.