Where you could be born / Europe / Northern Europe
Born in Iceland
About 1 in 30,723 people born in 2023 started life in Iceland. A boy can expect to live 81 years and a girl 85, up from 69 and 74 in 1950. Most people live in cities, and nearly everyone has basic drinking water.
Life and health
Life lasts about 12 years longer than in 1950. Child deaths fell from 27 in every 1,000 births to 1.6.
GirlsBoys
Years a baby born that year could expect to live.
In every 1,000 births.
Family
Women had 3.9 children on average in 1950. Now it is 1.5, below the 2.1 it takes to keep a population steady.
Average over a lifetime.
Money and work
If every 100 coins of income were shared out, the richest fifth would hold 36 and the poorest fifth 9.
Daily life
The largest city is Reykjavík, with 118,918 people.
Cities and regions
Every state, province and large city with a page.
Largest regions
Sourced: GeoNames Population of each state, province or region.
People on the move
About 5.9% as many people born here live abroad as live here. The most common destinations are Denmark, Norway, Poland.
Safety nets
82% of older people receive a pension.
Events in the data
The game draws real events from these records, so a life lived here can meet them.
Now live it.
Born in Iceland, to a family drawn from these numbers. Every life replays exactly from its seed.
Elsewhere in Europe
How to read the sources. Every figure is sourced to a named dataset, shown beside it. A figure marked "Extrapolated" is estimated by a model because no survey covers the year. UN figures are for 2023, the latest year of UN estimates; other figures are the latest year their dataset has. Rank 1 is the highest figure among 230 countries and territories. All sources and licences