Which countries have the lowest and highest ages of majority?
Executive summary
Most countries legally declare adulthood at 18 years of age, but a handful of jurisdictions still set the age of majority higher (commonly 21) and some local laws or special rules create lower or variable thresholds; the available reporting confirms 18 as the global norm while flagging outliers and many important caveats [1] [2].
1. The global norm: age 18 as the default threshold
International summaries and comparative legal reviews show the overwhelming majority of states treat 18 as the age of majority, meaning the point at which a person “ceases to be considered a minor” and acquires full legal control over personal decisions, contracts and related rights [1] [2]. The OECD’s family database explicitly notes that the age of majority is 18 in almost all OECD countries, reinforcing that 18 is the baseline used in most modern legal systems [2]. Wikipedia’s synthesis of statutory norms concurs that “most countries set the age of majority at 18,” a formulation echoed across comparative datasets [1].
2. The higher extreme: countries and territories that retain 21
Although 18 is typical, some countries or subnational jurisdictions continue to set the age of majority at 21; guidance documents and comparative lists cite examples such as Madagascar being set at age 21 and note that a few other states historically have used higher thresholds [3]. Reporting and legal compilations emphasize that while 21 is uncommon today, it remains the highest frequently-cited statutory age of majority in certain national laws or older legal systems [1] [3].
3. The lower extreme and special cases: subdivisions, sex-differentiated rules and emancipation
A reliable, single global “lowest” country is not presented in the provided material because age-of-majority rules can vary inside federations, differ by sex in a handful of countries, or be superseded by emancipation mechanisms; maps and datasets warn that some countries have different ages for males and females and that subnational exceptions—such as differences between U.S. states or Scotland—complicate a neat ranking [4] [5]. Emancipation (via marriage, military service, economic independence or court order) can make a person an adult before the statutory age of majority in many jurisdictions, which means legal adulthood is sometimes determined by routes other than a blanket national age threshold [5] [1].
4. Why “age of majority” rankings are messy: overlapping thresholds and divergent legal concepts
Comparative sources repeatedly caution that the age of majority is only one of several legal ages—others include voting age, criminal responsibility, age of consent and drinking or labor limits—and countries often stagger these rights at different ages, so a country might treat someone as an adult for some purposes but not others [6] [1]. Mapping projects and datasets typically adopt the “most common” national age or the male age when sexes differ, but that approach flattens internal variations and can mislead if taken as definitive for every legal context [4] [6].
5. Direct answer and caveats
Directly stated: the vast majority of countries have set the age of majority at 18 (the global norm) [1] [2]; the highest commonly recorded statutory age of majority in comparative materials is 21 (with Madagascar cited as an example) [3]. The provided sources do not produce an authoritative, exhaustively ranked list that names a single country with the absolute lowest statutory age of majority worldwide, and they emphasize that local subdivisions, sex-differentiated statutes, and emancipation pathways mean that any claim about a single “lowest” country requires consulting national legislation or a detailed global dataset beyond the excerpts supplied here [4] [5] [6].