In 2022 life expectancy for both males and females at birth fell when compared to 2021. Male life expectancy fell from 78.71 years to 78.57 years, and from 82.68 years to 82.57 years for women.

In 2022, the life expectancy at birth for women born in the UK was 82.57 years, compared with 78.57 years for men. By age 65 men had a life expectancy of 18.25 years, compared with 20.76 years for women.

Male life expectancy at birth fell in all four countries of the United Kingdom in 2020-22 when compared with 2019/21. English men had a life expectancy of 78.83, compared with 76.52 in Scotland, 77.93 in Wales and 78.43 in Northern Ireland. In both England and Wales, life expectancy ticked up for the period 2021/23.

Mean, median and modal ages at death in the UK and its constituent countries, 2001 to 2003 and 2016 to 2018.

Provisional deaths registration data for single year of age and average age of death (median and mean) of persons whose death involved coronavirus (COVID-19), England and Wales. Includes deaths due to COVID-19 and breakdowns by sex.

It is only in the past two centuries where demographics and the development of human populations has emerged as a subject in its own right, as industrialization and improvements in medicine gave way to exponential growth of the world's population. There are very few known demographic studies conducted before the 1800s, which means that modern scholars have had to use a variety of documents from centuries gone by, along with archeological and anthropological studies, to try and gain a better understanding of the world's demographic development. Genealogical records One such method is the study of genealogical records from the past; luckily, there are many genealogies relating to European families that date back as far as medieval times. Unfortunately, however, all of these studies relate to families in the upper and elite classes; this is not entirely representative of the overall population as these families had a much higher standard of living and were less susceptible to famine or malnutrition than the average person (although elites were more likely to die during times of war). Nonetheless, there is much to be learned from this data. Impact of the Black Death In the centuries between 1200 and 1745, English male aristocrats who made it to their 21st birthday were generally expected to live to an age between 62 and 72 years old. The only century where life expectancy among this group was much lower was in the 1300s, where the Black Death caused life expectancy among adult English noblemen to drop to just 45 years. Experts assume that the pre-plague population of England was somewhere between four and seven million people in the thirteenth century, and just two million in the fourteenth century, meaning that Britain lost at least half of its population due to the plague. Although the plague only peaked in England for approximately eighteen months, between 1348 and 1350, it devastated the entire population, and further outbreaks in the following decades caused life expectancy in the decade to drop further. The bubonic plague did return to England sporadically until the mid-seventeenth century, although life expectancy among English male aristocrats rose again in the centuries following the worst outbreak, and even peaked at more than 71 years in the first half of the sixteenth century.

Life expectancy in the United Kingdom was below 39 years in the year 1765, and over the course of the next two and a half centuries, it is expected to have increased by more than double, to 81.1 by the year 2020. Although life expectancy has generally increased throughout the UK's history, there were several times where the rate deviated from its previous trajectory. These changes were the result of smallpox epidemics in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new sanitary and medical advancements throughout time (such as compulsory vaccination), and the First world War and Spanish Flu epidemic in the 1910s.

Annual data on death registrations by single year of age for the UK (1974 onwards) and England and Wales (1963 onwards).

Between 2021 and 2023, life expectancy for women in the United Kingdom was highest in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, at 86.46 years, while for men it was highest in Hart, at 83.44.

Update 2 March 2023: Following the merger of NHS Digital and NHS England on 1st February 2023 we are reviewing the future presentation of the NHS Outcomes Framework indicators. As part of this review, the annual publication which was due to be released in March 2023 has been delayed. Further announcements about this dataset will be made on this page in due course. The average number of additional years a man or woman aged 75 can be expected to live if they continue to live in the same place and the death rates in their area remain the same for the rest of their life. To ensure that the NHS is held to account for doing all that it can to prevent avoidable deaths in older people. This indicator captures all persons aged 75 and over. A correction was made to this indicator on the 6th March 2019 due to errors found in the data. The confidence intervals for females in the region breakdown for the 2015-17 time period were displayed the wrong way round and some of the upper intervals were rounded incorrectly. These have now been corrected. A further correction was made to this indicator on the 21st May 2020. For 2015-17, The population numbers presented within the local authority (LA) breakdown for females were found to be incorrect for three LAs. The affected LAs were Redcar and Cleveland (E06000003), Norwich (E07000148) and Redbridge (E09000026). These have now been corrected. The indicator value and confidence intervals for all three LAs were unaffected by the error. Legacy unique identifier: P01728

The average number of additional years a man or woman aged 75 can be expected to live if they continue to live in the same place and the death rates in their area remain the same for the rest of their life. To ensure that the NHS is held to account for doing all that it can to prevent avoidable deaths in older people. This indicator captures all persons aged 75 and over. A correction was made to this indicator on the 6th March 2019 due to errors found in the data. The confidence intervals for females in the region breakdown for the 2015-17 time period were displayed the wrong way round and some of the upper intervals were rounded incorrectly. These have now been corrected. A further correction was made to this indicator on the 21st May 2020. For 2015-17, The population numbers presented within the local authority (LA) breakdown for females were found to be incorrect for three LAs. The affected LAs were Redcar and Cleveland (E06000003), Norwich (E07000148) and Redbridge (E09000026). These have now been corrected. The indicator value and confidence intervals for all three LAs were unaffected by the error. Legacy unique identifier: P01728

Subnational trends in the average number of years people will live beyond their current age measured by “period life expectancy”.

Life expectancy at birth and at age 65, by sex, on a three-year average basis.

Life expectancy at birth for males and females for Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs), Leicester: 2016 to 2020The average number of years a person would expect to live based on contemporary mortality rates.For a particular area and time period, it is an estimate of the average number of years a newborn baby would survive if he or she experienced the age-specific mortality rates for that area and time period throughout his or her life.Life expectancy figures have been calculated based on death registrations between 2016 to 2020, which includes the first wave and part of the second wave of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Between 2021 and 2023, London was the region of the United Kingdom that had the highest average life expectancy for females, at 84.13 years, while South East England had the highest life expectancy for males at 80.32 years. By comparison, Scotland had the lowest life expectancy, at 76.79 for males and 80.77 for females.

United Kingdom UK: Adjusted Net Enrollment Rate: Primary: Male: % of Primary School Age Children data was reported at 98.645 % in 2012. This records an increase from the previous number of 98.331 % for 2011. United Kingdom UK: Adjusted Net Enrollment Rate: Primary: Male: % of Primary School Age Children data is updated yearly, averaging 97.654 % from Dec 1971 (Median) to 2012, with 34 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 99.998 % in 2005 and a record low of 93.390 % in 1985. United Kingdom UK: Adjusted Net Enrollment Rate: Primary: Male: % of Primary School Age Children data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.World Bank.WDI: Education Statistics. Adjusted net enrollment is the number of pupils of the school-age group for primary education, enrolled either in primary or secondary education, expressed as a percentage of the total population in that age group.; ; UNESCO Institute for Statistics; Weighted average; Each economy is classified based on the classification of World Bank Group's fiscal year 2018 (July 1, 2017-June 30, 2018).

Period life expectancy by age and sex for Great Britain. Each national life table is based on population estimates, births and deaths for a period of three consecutive years. Tables are published annually.

There were 12,005 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending March 7, 2025, compared with 11,907 in the previous week. During this time period, the two weeks with the highest number of weekly deaths were in April 2020, with the week ending April 17, 2020, having 22,351 deaths, and the following week 21,997 deaths, a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Death and life expectancy As of 2022, the life expectancy for women in the UK was just over 82.5 years, and almost 78.6 years for men. Compared with 1765, when average life expectancy was under 39 years, this is a huge improvement in historical terms. Even in the more recent past, life expectancy was less than 47 years at the start of the 20th Century, and was under 70 as recently as the 1950s. Despite these significant developments in the long-term, improvements in life expectancy stalled between 2009/11 and 2015/17, and have even gone in decline since 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, for example, life expectancy at birth fell by 23 weeks for females, and 37 weeks for males.2. COVID-19 in the UK The first cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom were recorded on January 31, 2020, but it was not until a month later that cases began to rise exponentially. By March 5 of this year there were more than 100 cases, rising to 1,000 days later and passing 10,000 cumulative cases by March 26. At the height of the pandemic in late April and early May, there were around six thousand new cases being recorded daily. As of January 2023, there were more than 24.2 million confirmed cumulative cases of COVID-19 recorded in the United Kingdom, resulting in 202,156 deaths.

United Kingdom UK: Mortality Rate: Adult: Female: per 1000 Female Adults data was reported at 53.693 Ratio in 2014. This records a decrease from the previous number of 53.890 Ratio for 2013. United Kingdom UK: Mortality Rate: Adult: Female: per 1000 Female Adults data is updated yearly, averaging 83.533 Ratio from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2014, with 55 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 111.369 Ratio in 1963 and a record low of 53.693 Ratio in 2014. United Kingdom UK: Mortality Rate: Adult: Female: per 1000 Female Adults data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s United Kingdom – Table UK.World Bank.WDI: Health Statistics. Adult mortality rate, female, is the probability of dying between the ages of 15 and 60--that is, the probability of a 15-year-old female dying before reaching age 60, if subject to age-specific mortality rates of the specified year between those ages.; ; (1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2017 Revision. (2) University of California, Berkeley, and Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. The Human Mortality Database.; Weighted average;