Women living longer in Spain

Spain comes second only to Japan on the list of countries in which women live the longest according to a report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The average Spanish woman lives to the age of 85, the Japanese to 87.

Worldwide life expectancy is now 68 years for men and 73 for women.

The country with the highest life expectancy for men is Iceland where they live, on average, to 81 years old while in Switzerland, Australia, Singapore and Italy, among others, they live one year less.

Spain is not among the countries where men live longer.

The WHO has also released a report on the countries in which life expectancy has gone up notably.

The biggest change was for Liberia where life expectancy had gone from an average of 42 years to 62, Ethiopia has gone from 45 to 64 and Rwanda from 48 to 65.

Despite this the disparity of life expectancy between the rich and the poor continues to be huge – a child born in a rich country can expect to live around 16 years longer than their counterpart born in a poor country.