How does France fare amongst other countries for living longest in good health?

People in France enjoy more years of good health on average than those elsewhere in the European Union,  a new report has found, with an average healthy life expectancy of 64.4 years against an EU average of 62.6 and a UK average of 62.5 .

Healthy life expectancy refers to the number of years that a person can be expected to live without an activity limitation, which broadly refers to age related disability, mobility problems and chronic illness.

Note that healthy life expectancy does not necessarily impact life expectancy directly.

It is a distinct measure from life expectancy, which in France currently stands at 85.75 for women and 80.03 for men, according to 2023 data from national statistics institute, INSEE. 

This is higher than in the UK, where life expectancy was 82.6 for women and 78.6 for men for the period 2020-2022, according to the Office of National Statistics.

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Healthy life expectancy

The report by the European Union's statistics agency, Eurostat, compiled using data from 2022, places the average healthy life expectancy of Europeans at 62.6 years, or 62.4 for men and 62.8 for women.

The report includes data from Norway and Switzerland although not EU countries. It also includes provisional and estimated data for some countries, which could skew the results.

The UK was not included in the report, however, data from the Office of National Statistics for 2022 places the UK’s healthy life expectancy at 62.5, or 62.4 for men and 62.7 for women.

This would put the UK in 13th place in the EU rankings, between Hungary and Poland.

France is in 9th place, with an average healthy life expectancy of 64.4 years or 63.7 for men and 65.2 for women.

Read more: More than 31,000 in 2024: Spectacular rise in centenarians in France