Eurostat: Growth of life expectancy down in Cyprus in 2021

Life expectancy in Cyprus fell to 81.3 years in 2021 compared to 82.4 years in 2020, Eurostat data has shown.

According to the data, during the last decade, life expectancy in the EU rose at a relatively consistent pace until 2019, when life expectancy at birth was 81.3 years, and since then, 2020 and 2021 have recorded declines in life expectancy.

During the same period, Cyprus saw a gradual, if slower, increase in life expectancy to 82.3 years in 2019, which remained relatively stable in 2020 at 82.4 years, and dropped in 2021 to 81.3 years.

In 2021, the overall life expectancy at birth in the EU was 80.1 years. The life expectancy for women in the EU stood at 82.9 years, which was 5.7 years longer than that for men, who averaged 77.2 years. At the time of their birth, women are expected to live longer in all 242 NUTS 2 regions where data is available.

In Cyprus, the life expectancy among women stood at 83.4 years in 2021, compared to 79.2 years among men (a gap of 4.2 years). Cyprus is a single region for statistical purposes on the NUTS 2 level.

The largest gender gap among the member states of the EU in 2021 was recorded in Latvia, where life expectancy at birth for women was 9.8 years higher. The smallest gender gap was observed in the French outermost region of Mayotte, where life expectancy for women was 2.3 years higher than that for men.

The highest life expectancy at birth for women was in the Spanish capital region of Comunidad de Madrid (88.2 years), followed by five other regions in Spain – Comunidad Foral de Navarra (87.6 years), Castilla y León (87.5 years), Cantabria (87.1 years), Galicia and País Vasco (both 87.0 years).

Outside of Spain, the next highest levels of life expectancy for women at birth were reported for Rhône-Alpes in France and Provincia Autonoma di Trento in Italy (both 86.7 years).

The highest figure for life expectancy at birth for men in 2021, at 82.8 years, was recorded in the autonomous island region of Åland (Finland).

The next highest levels were reported in two Spanish regions, Comunidad de Madrid (82.2 years) and Comunidad Foral de Navarra (81.9), and for two Swedish regions, Stockholm (82.1 years) and Småland med öarna (81.9 years).