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

In 2021/23, life expectancy at birth in Northern Ireland was ***** years for women and ***** years for men. For people aged 65 life expectancy was ***** years for women, and ***** years for men.

Period and Cohort Mortality rates (qx) for Northern Ireland using the high life expectancy variant by single year of age 0 to 100.

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.

At the beginning of the 1840s, life expectancy from birth in Ireland was just over 38 years. However, this figure would see a dramatic decline with the beginning of the Great Famine in 1845, and dropped below 21 years in the second half of the decade (in 1849 alone, life expectancy fell to just 14 years). The famine came as a result of a Europe-wide potato blight, which had a disproportionally devastating impact on the Irish population due to the dependency on potatoes (particularly in the south and east), and the prevalence of a single variety of potato on the island that allowed the blight to spread faster than in other areas of Europe. Additionally, authorities forcefully redirected much of the country's surplus grain to the British mainland, which exacerbated the situation. Within five years, mass starvation would contribute to the deaths of over one million people on the island, while a further one million would emigrate; this also created a legacy of emigration from Ireland, which saw the population continue to fall until the mid-1900s, and the total population of the island is still well below its pre-famine level of 8.5 million people.

Following the end of the Great Famine, life expectancy would begin to gradually increase in Ireland, as post-famine reforms would see improvements in the living standards of the country’s peasantry, most notably the Land Wars, a largely successful series of strikes, boycotts and protests aimed at reform of the country's agricultural land distribution, which began in the 1870s and lasted into the 20th century. As these reforms were implemented, life expectancy in Ireland would rise to more than fifty years by the turn of the century. While this rise would slow somewhat in the 1910s, due to the large number of Irish soldiers who fought in the First World War and the Spanish Flu pandemic, as well as the period of civil unrest leading up to the island's partition in 1921, life expectancy in Ireland would rise greatly in the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, Ireland's healthcare system and living standards developed similarly to the rest of Western Europe, and today, it is often ranks among the top countries globally in terms of human development, GDP and quality of healthcare. With these developments, the increase in life expectancy from birth in Ireland was relatively constant in the first century of independence, and in 2020 is estimated to be 82 years.

Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years a person can expect to live should current mortality

patterns stay constant. This report details how trends in mortality by age and cause of death explain recent

changes in life expectancy. The results are examined in the context of changes in the recording, measuring

and classifi cation of demographic data over recent years.

Source agency: Health, Social Service and Public Safety (Northern Ireland)

Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: NI HSC IMS An overview of changes in Northern Ireland life expectancy

Female life expectancy at birth rose in all four countries of the United Kingdom in 2021-23 when compared with 2020-22. English women had a life expectancy of 83.04, compared with 80.8 in Scotland, 82.01 in Wales and 82.48 in Northern Ireland.

Additional file 2: Table A1. Absolute number of avoidable and non-avoidable causes of death in the UK in 2001-2003 and 2014-2016, stratified by sex. Table A2. Results of Arriaga’s decomposition for the UK. Table A3. Results of Arriaga’s decomposition for England & Wales. Table A4. Results of Arriaga’s decomposition for Northern Ireland. Table A5. Results of Arriaga’s decomposition for Scotland. Table A6. Age- and cause-specific contributions to gap in life expectancy between England & Wales vs. Northern Ireland. Table A7. Age- and cause-specific contributions to gap in life expectancy between England & Wales vs. Scotland.

This report presents the latest figures on male and female health expectancy, at birth and at age 65, for the UK and its four constituent countries. While life expectancy (LE) provides an estimate of average expected life-span, healthy life expectancy (HLE) divides total LE into years spent in good or ‘not good’ health. Disability-free life expectancy (DFLE) divides LE into years lived with and without a chronic illness or disability. These figures are three-year averages. LE is taken from the UK national interim life tables published annually by ONS, and the measures of health and chronic illness from the General Household Survey (GHS) in Great Britain and the Continuous Household Survey (CHS) in Northern Ireland. Source agency: Office for National Statistics Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: National Health Expectancies

Population estimates relate to the population as of 30th June each year, and therefore are often referred to as mid-year estimates. Estimates of the population aged 85 and over in Northern Ireland provide a further age breakdown of those aged 90 and over, by single year of age up to 104 years, and collectively for those aged 105 and over. These statistics contribute to the production of population projections and life expectancy statistics for Northern Ireland, all of which are of policy interest because of the implications for pensions and the delivery of front line services for the older population such as housing, transport and health care.

Objective Gains in life expectancy have faltered in several high-income countries in recent years. We aim to compare life expectancy trends in Scotland to those seen internationally, and to assess the timing of any recent changes in mortality trends for Scotland. Setting Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England & Wales, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, USA. Methods We used life expectancy data from the Human Mortality Database (HMD) to calculate the mean annual life expectancy change for 24 high-income countries over five-year periods from 1992 to 2016, and the change for Scotland for five-year periods from 1857 to 2016. One- and two-break segmented regression models were applied to mortality data from National Records of Scotland (NRS) to identify turning points in age-standardised mortality trends between 1990 and 2018. Results In 2012-2016 life expectancies in Scotland increased by 2.5 weeks/year for females and 4.5 weeks/year for males, the smallest gains of any period since the early 1970s. The improvements in life expectancy in 2012-2016 were smallest among females (<2.0 weeks/year) in Northern Ireland, Iceland, England & Wales and the USA and among males (<5.0 weeks/year) in Iceland, USA, England & Wales and Scotland. Japan, Korea, and countries of Eastern Europe have seen substantial gains in the same period. The best estimate of when mortality rates changed to a slower rate of improvement in Scotland was the year to 2012 Q4 for males and the year to 2014 Q2 for females. Conclusion Life expectancy improvement has stalled across many, but not all, high income countries. The recent change in the mortality trend in Scotland occurred within the period 2012-2014. Further research is required to understand these trends, but governments must also take timely action on plausible contributors. Methods Description of methods used for collection/generation of data: The HMD has a detailed methods protocol available here: https://www.mortality.org/Public/Docs/MethodsProtocol.pdf The ONS and NRS also have similar methods for ensuring data consistency and quality assurance.

Methods for processing the data: The segmented regression was conducted using the 'segmented' package in R. The recommended references to this package and its approach are here: Vito M. R. Muggeo (2003). Estimating regression models with unknown break-points. Statistics in Medicine, 22, 3055-3071.

Vito M. R. Muggeo (2008). segmented: an R Package to Fit Regression Models with Broken-Line Relationships. R News, 8/1, 20-25. URL https://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/.

Vito M. R. Muggeo (2016). Testing with a nuisance parameter present only under the alternative: a score-based approach with application to segmented modelling. J of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 86, 3059-3067.

Vito M. R. Muggeo (2017). Interval estimation for the breakpoint in segmented regression: a smoothed score-based approach. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics, 59, 311-322.

Software- or Instrument-specific information needed to interpret the data, including software and hardware version numbers: The analyses were conducted in R version 3.6.1 and Microsoft Excel 2013.

Please see README.txt for further information

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.

The Northern Ireland Health and Social Wellbeing Survey is sponsored by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, to provide information on and monitor trends in the health of the Northern Ireland population over time.

The regional strategy for Northern Ireland health and personal social services, published in 1991, set out key health targets in a number of areas. The aim in setting these targets is to increase life expectancy among the population and to improve the quality of people's lives. Good quality information is vital for the formulation of health policies. The Health and Social Wellbeing Survey provides this information and plays a key role in ensuring that health planning is based on reliable information, as well as monitoring the effectiveness of government policies and the extent to which targets are achieved. The survey will be used to help plan health services to meet the needs of the population.

Further information about the survey, including links to online publications, may be found on the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) Health and Social Wellbeing Survey web pages.

Air pollution results from the introduction of a range of substances into the atmosphere from a wide variety of sources. It can cause both short term and long term effects on health, but also on the wider environment. The air quality in Northern Ireland is generally better now than it has been at any time since before the Industrial Revolution. These improvements have been achieved through the introduction of legislation enforcing tighter controls on emissions of pollutants from key sources, notably industry, domestic combustion and transport. However, despite the improvements made, air pollution is still recognised as a risk to health, and many people are concerned about pollution in the air that they breathe. Government statistics estimate that air pollution in the UK reduces the life expectancy of every person by an average of 7-8 months, with an associated cost of up to £20 billion each year. Legislation and Policies aiming to further minimise and track the impact of air pollution on health and the environment have been introduced in Europe, the UK and Northern Ireland.

Period life expectancy at birth and other age groups at regional and local authority levels in selected constituent countries.

High life expectancy variant projection for Northern Ireland including population by broad age group, components of change and summary statistics.

Moderately high life expectancy variant projection for Northern Ireland - population by age group, components of change and summary statistics.