Germany vs United Kingdom: Life expectancy

Germany

81.38 years

in 2023

United Kingdom

81.3 years

in 2023

Germany rank

45th

United Kingdom rank

46th

Life expectancy over time

Germany
United Kingdom

How they compare

Germany currently reports 81.38 years against 81.3 years in United Kingdom, a difference of 0.0762 years.

The two have swapped places 7 times across 83 shared years of data; in 1875 it was United Kingdom ahead.

Globally, Germany ranks 45th and United Kingdom ranks 46th of 236 countries.

Individual pages

Life expectancy in Germany
Life expectancy in United Kingdom
Full country ranking

About this data

Indicator: Life expectancy
Unit: years
Source: Riley (2005); Zijdeman et al. (2015); HMD (2025); UN WPP (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (Our World in Data)
Coverage: 236 places, 19,452 data points, 1543–2023
Last refreshed: 06 August 2026

Period life expectancy is the number of years the average person born in a certain year would live if they experienced the same chances of dying at each age as people did that year.