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.

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.

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

Between 1980 and 2022, life expectancy at 65 has increased for males and females in the United Kingdom. For men life expectancy has grown by around 5.29 years, while for women it has increased by about 3.85 years.

Pivot table for life expectancy by sex and area type, divided by three-year intervals starting from 2001 to 2003.

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.

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, male (years) in United Kingdom was reported at 79.36 years in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United Kingdom - Life expectancy at birth, male (years) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Healthy life expectancy (HLE) is an estimate of expected years of life spent in self-reported good health. The figure used is for females 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.

The life expectancy figure used is for females aged under 1 year. Figures are based on the number of deaths registered and mid-year population estimates, aggregated over three consecutive years.

Expectation of life at a given age for an area is the average number of years a person would live if he or she experienced that area's age-specific mortality rates for that time period throughout his or her life. It is therefore not the number of years someone of that age in the area could actually expect to live, both because the death rates of the area are likely to change in the future and because people may live in other areas for at least part of their lives.

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

We systematically reviewed the evidence on secular trends in main chronic conditions, disability and self-assessed general health among adults in the United Kingdom, as reported in primary/secondary care databases and population-based surveys. Searches were conducted separately for: (1) trends in age-standardised or age-specific prevalence of major non-communicable diseases, disability, and self-reported general health; (2) trends in health expectancy. The databases searched were MEDLINE, EMBASE/EMBASE Classic and Web of Science (all from 1946/7). The evidence was synthesised narratively. There were 39 studies reporting trends in prevalence of health conditions and 15 studies in health expectancy. We did not find evidence for improvement in the age-standardised or age-specific prevalence of any of the studied major chronic conditions over the last few decades, apart from Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Both increasing or stable prevalence rates with simultaneous rising life expectancy support the expansion of morbidity theory, meaning that people are expected to spend a greater number of years with chronic condition(s). The evidence on disability—expressed as prevalence or health expectancy—was mixed, but also appeared to support the expansion of morbidity among those aged 65 or over. The evidence on trends in disability for younger age is lacking. Across the studied period (1946–2017), the UK population endured more years with chronic morbidity and disability, which may place a serious strain on the health care system, the economy and the society.

Life expectancy at birth, total (years) in United Kingdom was reported at 81.24 years in 2023, 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 June of 2025.

The United Kingdom: Life expectancy, in years, female: The latest value from 2022 is 83.8 years, an increase from 82.8 years in 2021. In comparison, the world average is 74.94 years, based on data from 192 countries. Historically, the average for the United Kingdom from 1960 to 2022 is 78.8 years. The minimum value, 73.9 years, was reached in 1961 while the maximum of 83.8 years was recorded in 2022.

The total life expectancy at birth in the United Kingdom saw no significant changes in 2023 in comparison to the previous year 2022 and remained at around 81.24 years. However, 2023 marked the third consecutive increase of the life expectancy at birth. These figures refer to the expected lifespan of the average newborn in a given country or region, providing that mortality patterns at the time of birth remain constant thereafter.Find more statistics on other topics about the United Kingdom with key insights such as infant mortality rate, death rate, and total fertility rate.

What does the data show?

Life expectancy at birth (years) from the UK Climate Resilience Programme UK-SSPs project. The data is available for each Office for National Statistics Local Authority District (ONS LAD) shape simplified to a 10m resolution.

The data is available for the end of each decade. This dataset contains SSP1, SSP2, SSP3, SSP4 and SSP5. For more information see the table below.

Indicator

Health

Metric

Life expectancy at birth

Unit

Years

Spatial Resolution

LAD

Temporal Resolution

Decadal

Sectoral Categories

N/A

Baseline Data Source

ONS 2018

Projection Trend Source

Stakeholder process

What are the naming conventions and how do I explore the data?

This data contains a field for the year at the end of each decade. A separate field for 'Scenario' allows the data to be filtered, e.g. by scenario 'SSP3'.

To understand how to explore the data, see this page: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/457e7a2bc73e40b089fac0e47c63a578

Please note, if viewing in ArcGIS Map Viewer, the map will default to 2020 values.

What are Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)?

The global SSPs, used in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments, are five different storylines of future socioeconomic circumstances, explaining how the global economy and society might evolve over the next 80 years. Crucially, the global SSPs are independent of climate change and climate change policy, i.e. they do not consider the potential impact climate change has on societal and economic choices.

Instead, they are designed to be coupled with a set of future climate scenarios, the Representative Concentration Pathways or ‘RCPs’. When combined together within climate research (in any number of ways), the SSPs and RCPs can tell us how feasible it would be to achieve different levels of climate change mitigation, and what challenges to climate change mitigation and adaptation might exist.

Until recently, UK-specific versions of the global SSPs were not available to combine with the RCP-based climate projections. The aim of the UK-SSPs project was to fill this gap by developing a set of socioeconomic scenarios for the UK that is consistent with the global SSPs used by the IPCC community, and which will provide the basis for further UK research on climate risk and resilience.

Useful links: Further information on the UK SSPs can be found on the UK SSP project site and in this storymap.Further information on RCP scenarios, SSPs and understanding climate data within the Met Office Climate Data Portal.

School life expectancy, primary, both sexes (years) in United Kingdom was reported at 6.0651 years in 2018, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United Kingdom - School life expectancy, primary, both sexes (years) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on June of 2025.

Template for creating life expectancy and health expectancies estimates.