Where you are born: life expectancy in eight countries
A baby born in Japan today can expect to live about 85 years. A baby born in Nigeria, about 55. The single largest fact about a life is where it starts.
Nothing a person chooses changes their odds as much as something nobody chooses: where they are born. The United Nations estimates life expectancy at birth for every country in the world in its World Population Prospects. Here are its figures for the eight countries where One Life is set, for 2026, rounded to the nearest year.
The numbers
- Japan: 85 years (men 82, women 88)
- Germany: 82 years (men 80, women 84)
- United Kingdom: 82 years (men 80, women 84)
- United States: 80 years (men 77, women 82)
- Brazil: 76 years (men 73, women 79)
- Mexico: 76 years (men 73, women 78)
- India: 73 years (men 71, women 74)
- Nigeria: 55 years (men 55, women 55)
The gap between the top and the bottom of this list is thirty years: a whole adult life.
What life expectancy at birth means
Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a newborn would live if the death rates of today stayed the same for the rest of its life. It is an average, and averages can mislead in one important way: deaths in early childhood pull it down sharply.
In countries where many children die before the age of five, as in Nigeria, life expectancy at birth is much lower than the age most adults actually reach. A Nigerian who survives childhood can expect to live considerably longer than 55. This is why, in One Life, which starts a life at five, the odds an adult life faces in Nigeria are better than the figure at birth suggests, but still the hardest of the eight.
Why the gaps are so large
The differences come from a handful of large causes:
- Childhood survival, which depends on clean water, vaccination, nutrition and care at birth.
- Infectious disease, still a major cause of death in lower-income countries.
- Health care, and whether people can afford it. In India and Nigeria, most medical care is paid for in cash, often by families.
- Diet, smoking, drinking and activity, which drive heart disease, the leading cause of death in rich countries.
- Violence and road deaths, which are higher in some countries than others and fall mostly on the young.
Rich countries differ from one another too. The United States spends more on health care than any other country yet has lower life expectancy than Japan, Germany or the UK, a gap researchers link to higher rates of obesity, drug overdoses, gun deaths and road deaths, and to unequal access to care.
Women outlive men in all eight, by three to six years in most of them, though in Nigeria the gap is less than a year.
Questions people ask
Has life expectancy been rising? In most countries, yes, over the long run. The pandemic years caused falls in many countries, including the United States, Brazil, Mexico and India, and most have since recovered or are recovering.
Is life expectancy the same as how long people actually live? Not exactly. It is a summary of today’s death rates, not a forecast. People born today will probably live longer than their life expectancy at birth suggests, if death rates keep falling as they have for most of the last century.
What is the gap between the richest and poorest within a country? In many countries it is large. In the United States, studies have found gaps of more than ten years between the richest and poorest groups. Where you are born matters, and so does who you are born to.
In One Life
Every life in One Life is born in one of these eight countries, and the country is the life’s first and largest roll. It sets the odds of a long life, but also the money, the prices, the school system and its exams, what illness costs and whether there is a state pension. A life in Okayama and a life in Ibadan face different dice from the first scene.
The countries section has a page for each of the eight: what a life there is like to play, and the numbers behind it.