Eurostat · 28 countries · 2024

Living longer and living well are not the same map.

65.2

healthy years at birth · European Union · 2024

A newborn in Italy can expect 73.4 years free of any limiting health problem. In Latvia it is 52.5. That is 20.9 years of difference inside one continent.

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This is not life expectancy. It counts only the years expected without a long-standing limitation in daily activity, so a country can add years of life without adding healthy ones. Several of the richest countries here sit below several of the poorest.

The map

Where healthy years are most and fewest

Tap a country to see its figures.

Not labeled on the map:
The age by which half of young people have left the parental home, 2024. Hatched countries have no figure for 2024; the map shows their most recent year instead, and the table below names that year. Every figure is also in that table.

Your turn

How many healthy years are left?

Enter your age and we will place it against what each country expects at birth.

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This is an expectation at birth, not a forecast for you

The figure describes a newborn today under current conditions. Subtracting your age from it is arithmetic, not a prediction: your own health, your country at the time you were born, and everything since all sit outside what this number knows.

Every country

All 30 countries, fewest to most

Sort by any column. The gap column is men minus women, so a positive number means men expect more healthy years.

Age by which half of young people have left the parental home. 28 countries at 2024; 2 shown at their most recent year instead.
Trend 2004–2024, with breaks
Latvia 52.5 51.1 53.9 −2.8 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2013.
Slovakia 57.1 56.0 58.2 −2.2 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008.
Finland 57.3 58.4 56.2 +2.2 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2007.
Switzerland 58.0 59.4 56.5 +2.9 years Trend 2007 to 2024. Series breaks in 2013.
Estonia 58.6 56.8 60.6 −3.8 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008.
Netherlands 59.5 60.8 58.2 +2.6 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008, 2016.
Luxembourg 2022 60.2 60.7 59.4 +1.3 years Trend 2004 to 2022. Series breaks in 2016, 2020, 2021, 2022.
Austria 60.4 60.2 60.6 −0.4 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008.
Czechia 62.4 61.7 63.2 −1.5 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2007.
Denmark 62.4 63.5 61.2 +2.3 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008, 2020, 2024.
Germany 62.4 62.1 62.6 −0.5 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2006, 2008, 2015, 2020, 2023.
Iceland 2018 62.4 65.7 59.0 +6.7 years Trend 2004 to 2018. Series breaks in 2007.
Croatia 63.1 62.2 64.1 −1.9 years Trend 2010 to 2024. Series breaks in 2012, 2013, 2022, 2023.
Hungary 63.3 62.3 64.3 −2.0 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2022.
France 63.6 63.5 63.7 −0.2 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2020.
Belgium 63.9 64.0 63.9 +0.1 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2005, 2019.
Cyprus 63.9 63.4 64.4 −1.0 year Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2006.
Lithuania 64.3 61.6 67.0 −5.4 years Trend 2005 to 2024.
Poland 64.7 63.2 66.2 −3.0 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2006, 2022.
Portugal 64.8 65.8 63.9 +1.9 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2005, 2012, 2014, 2024.
Norway 64.8 67.0 62.3 +4.7 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008, 2023.
Romania 65.0 64.0 65.9 −1.9 years Trend 2007 to 2024. Series breaks in 2010.
Ireland 66.9 66.6 67.3 −0.7 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2020.
Slovenia 67.5 66.3 68.8 −2.5 years Trend 2005 to 2024. Series breaks in 2010.
Sweden 67.5 68.9 66.0 +2.9 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008, 2010, 2014, 2021.
Spain 68.6 68.6 68.6 0.0 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008, 2024.
Bulgaria 69.1 66.8 71.4 −4.6 years Trend 2006 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008, 2016, 2022.
Greece 69.9 68.9 70.8 −1.9 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2008.
Malta 70.6 71.0 70.4 +0.6 years Trend 2005 to 2024.
Italy 73.4 72.9 73.8 −0.9 years Trend 2004 to 2024. Series breaks in 2007, 2016, 2024.

The gap is men minus women, so a positive number means women reach the midpoint earlier. A year next to a country means Eurostat has no 2024 figure for it, and the row shows that year instead. Trend lines are not drawn across series breaks (the small notches): in 2024 the EU Labour Force Survey was reorganized, and 4 of 30 countries carry a break there.

What the numbers say

The gap between the sexes almost closes here

Women live longer. They do not clearly live healthier.

Across life expectancy women lead everywhere in Europe, often by years. Here the picture breaks down: men expect more healthy years in 9 of 28 countries, and the average difference across all of them is under a year.

2024
4.7 years

the widest gap between men and women, in Norway.

largest difference

Wealth does not order this list the way it orders life expectancy. The big economies land at Netherlands 59.5, Germany 62.4, France 63.6, Poland 64.7, Spain 68.6, Italy 73.4 — several of them below countries with a fraction of their income per head. Whatever buys healthy years, it is not only money, and a figure that tracked only national income would not look like this.

Method

How this is measured

Published by Eurostat. Nothing here is estimated on top of what they publish.

What the figure is
The number of years a newborn can expect to live without a long-standing limitation in daily activity, combining life tables with the self-reported limitation question in EU-SILC.
What it is not
It is not life expectancy, not a measure of illness, and not a distribution. One number per country means no percentile is possible — only which side of it you fall on.
Coverage
28 countries have a figure for 2024. Luxembourg (2022), Iceland (2018) stopped reporting earlier and are shown at their most recent year, hatched on the map and labelled in the table. The United States, Canada and Australia are not in this dataset.
Series breaks
Eurostat flags a break in 2024, in or just before the latest year, so no comparison with the past is shown on this page. A figure that looks like a trend across a break is worse than no trend at all.
  • Dataset Eurostat hlth_hlye, Healthy life years by sex (from 2004 onwards)
  • Series 2004 to 2024
  • Last updated by Eurostat 2026-07-17
  • Retrieved 2026-10-24
  • DOI10.2908/HLTH_HLYE
  • Eurostat metadataexplanatory texts

Licence: Eurostat data may be reused, including commercially, with attribution. How we handle data is on the method page.