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.

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.

Pivot table for healthy life expectancy by sex and area type, divided by three-year intervals starting from 2011 to 2013.

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.

Life expectancy at birth and age 65 by sex and ward, London borough, region, 1999/03 - 2008/12.

The population data used is revised 2002-2010 ONS mid year estimates (MYE) - revised post 2011 Census. Revised population estimates by single year of age for wards can also be found on the ONS website for 2002-2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013. These figures are consistent with the published revised mid-2002 to mid-2010 local authority estimates.

Rolling 5-year combined life expectancies are used for wards to reduce the effects of the variability in number of deaths in each year. The same method is applied to higher geographies to enable meaningful comparisons. However, 3-year combined expectancies are published separately on the Datastore for geographical areas that are local authority and above.

If the GLA publish revised 2002-2010 population data for wards then these life expectancy figures will also be revised to reflect them.

The ONS vital statistics mortality data breaks deaths into 10 year age bands. 5 year age band deaths were modelled using this data.

Vital Statistics: Population and Health Reference Tables are available on the ONS website here.

The tool for calculating life expectancy is available from Public Health England.
The highest age band in the calculator is currently 85+. If the tool is updated with a higher upper age band (ie 90+), this data will be revised to reflect this change.

Healthy life expectancy and disability-free life expectancy (1999-2003) at birth have been calculated for wards in England and Wales. These can be found on the ONS website.

This data is also presented in the GLA ward profiles.

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

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.

United Kingdom UK: Life Expectancy at Birth: Total data was reported at 80.956 Year in 2016. This stayed constant from the previous number of 80.956 Year for 2015. United Kingdom UK: Life Expectancy at Birth: Total data is updated yearly, averaging 75.380 Year from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2016, with 57 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 81.305 Year in 2014 and a record low of 70.827 Year in 1963. United Kingdom UK: Life Expectancy at Birth: Total data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s UK – Table UK.World Bank: Health Statistics. Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life.; ; (1) United Nations Population Division. World Population Prospects: 2017 Revision, or derived from male and female life expectancy at birth from sources such as: (2) Census reports and other statistical publications from national statistical offices, (3) Eurostat: Demographic Statistics, (4) United Nations Statistical Division. Population and Vital Statistics Reprot (various years), (5) U.S. Census Bureau: International Database, and (6) Secretariat of the Pacific Community: Statistics and Demography Programme.; Weighted average;

Healthy life expectancy (HLE) is an estimate of expected years of life spent in self-reported good health. The figure used is for males aged under 1 year. Figures are based on the number of deaths registered and mid-year population estimates, aggregated over three consecutive years.

It is used as a high-level outcome to contrast and monitor the health status of different populations at specific points in time, giving context to the impacts of policy changes and interventions at both national and local levels.

Healthy life expectancy has value across state, private, and voluntary sectors, in the assessment of healthy ageing, fitness for work, health improvement monitoring, extensions to the state pension age, pension provision, and health and social care need. This indicator is an extremely important summary measure of mortality and morbidity. It complements the supporting indicators such as mortality by cause by showing the overall trends and setting the context in which local authorities can assess the other indicators and identify the drivers of healthy life expectancy.

The health prevalence data used in calculating HLE estimates for the various geographies in England were derived from the Annual Population Survey (APS).

Data is Powered by LG Inform Plus and automatically checked for new data on the 3rd of each month.

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.

Period life expectancy for single-year periods, at birth and other age groups at regional and local authority levels in constituent countries of Great Britain. These are official statistics in development.

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

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.

Period life expectancy by age and sex. Each life table is based on population estimates, births and deaths for a single year.

These data contain lifetables derived from the ONS Longitudinal study dataset, and according to age, sex and individual socio-economic status measured with education, occupation or wage in England and Wales in 2011. Life table according to age, sex and individual’s education, or occupation or wage for the England & Wales population in 2011 The data contained in these files are aggregated data from the ONS Longitudinal Study (ONS LS). The ONS LS is a long-term census-based multi-cohort study. It uses four annual birthdates as random selection criteria, giving a 1% sample of the England and Wales population (10.1093/ije/dyy243). The initial sample was drawn from the 1971 Census, and study members’ census records have been linked every 10 years up to the 2011 Census. New members enter the study through birth or immigration, and existing members leave through death or emigration. Vital life events information (births, deaths and cancer registrations) are also linked to sample members’ records. File lifetab_2011_educ.csv Life table according to age, sex and education level for the England & Wales population in 2011 age x: attained age (years) from 20 to 100 sex: 2 categories: male (m) and female (f) educ: 6 categories of highest educational attainment: A: no qualifications; B: 1-4 GCSEs/O levels; C: 5+ GCSEs/O levels, D: Apprenticeships/Vocational qualifications, E: A/AS levels, F: Degree/Higher Degree mx: mortality rate for 1 person-year qx: annual probability of death ( = 1 - exp(-mx) ) ex: life-expectancy (years) File lifetab_2011_inc.csv Life table from age 20 onwards and according to age, sex and income level for the England & Wales population in 2011 age x: attained age (years) from 20 to 100 sex: 2 categories: male (m); female (f) inc: 5 categories of income: Least deprived; 4; 3; 2; Most deprived mx: mortality rate for 1 person-year qx: annual probability of death ( = 1 - exp(-mx) ) ex: life-expectancy (years) File lifetab_2011_occ.csv Life table from age 20 onwards and according to age, sex and occupation for the England & Wales population in 2011 age x: attained age (years) from 20 to 100 sex: 2 categories: male (m); female (f) occ: 3 categories of occupation: C: Technical/Routine; B: Intermediate; A: Managerial/Administrative/Professional mx: mortality rate for 1 person-year qx: annual probability of death ( = 1 - exp(-mx) ) ex: life-expectancy (years) File lifetab_2011_overall.csv Life table from age 20 onwards and according to age and sex for the England & Wales population in 2011 age x: attained age (years) from 20 to 100 sex: 2 categories: male (m); female (f) mx: mortality rate for 1 person-year qx: annual probability of death ( = 1 - exp(-mx) ) ex: life-expectancy (years) More details can be found in the following paper: Ingleby F, Woods L, Atherton I, Baker M, Elliss-Brookes L, Belot A. (2021). Describing socio-economic variation in life expectancy according to an individual's education, occupation and wage in England and Wales: An analysis of the ONS Longitudinal Study. SSM - Population Health, doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100815

In the UK, people who reside within more income-deprived areas live a shorter period of time after a diagnosis of cancer compared to people living in less income-deprived areas. At least part of these inequalities in cancer survival are due to inequalities in cancer care, even considering differential patient and tumour factors such as stage at diagnosis. The specific mechanisms by which area-based deprivation levels lead to poorer individual health outcomes within the context of a universal healthcare system, free at the point of use, are not well understood. These analyses will enable, for the first time, the examination of how an individual patient's socio-economic status is associated with poorer cancer survival in England, and will demonstrate how these associations might be modified by the level of deprivation in the small area within which the patient resides. Our aim is to perform an in-depth study of the association between the individual patient's deprivation and cancer survival, considering in particular how this is influenced by their socio-economic context, whether it varies over time since diagnosis and whether it has changed over calendar time. We will focus on three indicators of deprivation: income, education and occupation. We will first examine the correlation between individual and area deprivation, by each of these indicators, and then secondly describe the association between individual deprivation and survival. Third, we will assess whether the association between individual deprivation and patients' survival is modified by area deprivation; that is, whether equally deprived individuals in different areas fare better, or worse, according to the socio-economic context of the area within which they live. Finally we will gain the insights of patients, carers, and healthcare professionals on these data, and communicate these to cancer policy...

Life expectancy at birth, total (years) in United Kingdom was reported at 82.06 years in 2022, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United Kingdom - Life expectancy at birth, total (years) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on March of 2025.

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