About this data

Source: ONS, Past and projected period and cohort life tables: 2024-based, UK, 1981 to 2074

• Period life expectancy is the average number of years a person would live if they experienced the death rates of a given year at every age throughout their life. It's a summary of death rates in that year, not a forecast of how long people born then will actually live.
• Figures are for single calendar years, worked out from ONS's death rates by age for England and Wales. They reproduce ONS's published figures exactly. ONS says figures before 1961 are not accredited official statistics.
• The dips in 1918–1919 and 2020 reflect the flu pandemic, the First World War and COVID-19.

This chart appears in Life expectancy.