Spain one of safest nations in developed world, according to OECD

The number of murders per inhabitant is four times lower than the average of all developed countries on earth, and its life expectancy is the third-highest.

In the last decade, the number of murder cases has dropped by a third, as has the number of traffic deaths.

Subjectively, the organisation says, people in Spain are 'feeling much safer' and 'more satisfied with their lives' than they were 10 years ago.

The OECD is made up of first-world and emerging economies, covering all of Europe, much of east Asia, the Anglo-Saxon countries, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and MINT (México, Indonesia, Nigeria, Thailand) and some of the other largest economies in Latin America, such as Colombia and Chile.

In Spain, the homicide rate was 0.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, lower than almost every other OECD nation except Japan and the UK.

However, in Spain, murder and manslaughter is statistically more likely to occur within relationships, or between ex-partners – random attacks on total strangers are extremely rare, and the levels of inner-city knife crime seen in the UK are practically unheard of in Spain.

The highest homicide rates in the OECD were in Colombia – 24.3 per 100,000 – and México, at 21.3 per 100,000.

Spain's life expectancy is currently 83 years and five months – although women in Spain live to an average of nearly 86 – beaten only by Sweden, at 83 years and 7.2 months, and Japan, at 84 years and two-and-a-half months.

Since the worst years of the global financial crisis, life expectancy in the OECD has risen by an average of 14 months.

It is now, across the board, a mean age of 80 years and six months, with the lowest being in Colombia, at 74 years and 7.2 months.