About this data

Source: Riley (2005); Zijdeman et al. (2015); Human Mortality Database (2025); UN World Population Prospects (2024), via Our World in Data

• 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 before 1841 are for England only, and are estimates for five-year periods from parish records of births, marriages and burials (Wrigley and Schofield). From 1841 they are for England and Wales, and later the UK, from official records.
• Life expectancy in the past was low mainly because so many babies and children died. Adults who survived childhood often lived into their 60s or older.

This chart appears in Life expectancy.