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.

Mortality rates (qx) values from the national life tables release, presented in time series format. These statistics are for males and females for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the UK.

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

Period life expectancy by age and sex for 1980 to 2023 for England, Wales (and combined), Scotland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, and the UK. Each life table is based on population estimates, births and deaths for a single year.

Period and cohort mortality rates (qx) for Great Britain using the principal projection by single year of age 0 to 100.

Following the publication of the period and cohort life expectancy tables ONS prepares databases for the UK and each of the constituent countries containing mortality data used in the calculation of historic and projected life tables. Published for the first time in this release are tables of historic and projected qx (probability of dying at each age) and lx values (numbers of people surviving at each age) for the UK, on a period and cohort basis for each year 1951 to 2060.

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: Official Statistics not designated as National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: qx and lx tables

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;

Annual data on death registrations. Summary tables including age-standardised mortality rates,deaths by age and sex.

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Mortality Statistics: Deaths registered in England and Wales by area of usual residence

United Kingdom UK: Mortality Rate: Under-5: Male: per 1000 Live Births data was reported at 4.800 Ratio in 2016. This records a decrease from the previous number of 4.900 Ratio for 2015. United Kingdom UK: Mortality Rate: Under-5: Male: per 1000 Live Births data is updated yearly, averaging 5.700 Ratio from Dec 1990 (Median) to 2016, with 5 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 10.400 Ratio in 1990 and a record low of 4.800 Ratio in 2016. United Kingdom UK: Mortality Rate: Under-5: Male: per 1000 Live Births 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. Under-five mortality rate, male is the probability per 1,000 that a newborn male baby will die before reaching age five, if subject to male age-specific mortality rates of the specified year.; ; Estimates Developed by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UNICEF, WHO, World Bank, UN DESA Population Division) at www.childmortality.org.; Weighted Average; Given that data on the incidence and prevalence of diseases are frequently unavailable, mortality rates are often used to identify vulnerable populations. Moreover, they are among the indicators most frequently used to compare socioeconomic development across countries. Under-five mortality rates are higher for boys than for girls in countries in which parental gender preferences are insignificant. Under-five mortality captures the effect of gender discrimination better than infant mortality does, as malnutrition and medical interventions have more significant impacts to this age group. Where female under-five mortality is higher, girls are likely to have less access to resources than boys.

Between 1953 and 2021, the death rate of the United Kingdom fluctuated between a high of 12.2 deaths per 1,000 people in 1962 and a low of 8.7 in 2011. From 2011 onwards, the death rate creeped up slightly and, in 2020, reached 10.3 deaths per 1,000 people. In 2021, the most recent year provided here, the death rate was ten, a decline from 2020 but still higher than in almost every year in the twenty-first century. The recent spike in the death rate corresponds to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, with the first cases recorded in early 2020. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 deaths in the United Kingdom, the highest in more than a century. Although there were fewer deaths in 2021, at 667,479, this was still far higher than in recent years. When looking at the weekly deaths in England and Wales for this time period, two periods stand out for reporting far more deaths than usual. The first period was between weeks 13 and 22 of 2020, which saw two weeks in late April report more than 20,000 deaths. Excess deaths for the week ending April 17, 2020, were 11,854, and 11,539 for the following week. Another wave of deaths occurred in January 2021, when there were more than 18,000 deaths per week between weeks three and five of that year. Improvements to life expectancy slowing Between 2020 and 2022, life expectancy in the United Kingdom was approximately 82.57 years for women and 78.57 years for men. Compared with life expectancy in 1980/82 this marked an increase of around six years for women and almost eight years for men. Despite these long-term developments, improvements to life expectancy have been slowing in recent years, and have declined since 2017/19. As of 2022, the country with the highest life expectancy in the World was Japan, which was 84.5 years, followed by South Korea, at 83.6 years.

In 2024, the mortality rate across all branches of the armed forces of the United Kingdom was 42 deaths per 100,000 personnel. The mortality rate was highest among members of the RAF at 43 deaths per 100,000 personnel..

Forecast: Total Infant Mortality Rates in the UK 2024 - 2028 Discover more data with ReportLinker!

In 2023, the age-specific death rate for men aged 90 or over in England and Wales was 248.1 per one thousand population, and 215.1 for women. Except for infants that were under the age of one, younger age groups had the lowest death rate, with the death rate getting progressively higher in older age groups.

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.