About this data

Source: Office for National Statistics (ONS), National life tables – life expectancy in the UK: 2022 to 2024

• All three are worked out from the same life tables, which apply each period's death rates at every age to 100,000 newborns.
• Life expectancy is the average age at death. The median age at death is the age by which half would have died. The most common (modal) age at death is the age at which most deaths happen.
• Life expectancy is pulled down by the small number of people who die young; the most common age at death isn't, so it shows how long a typical long life lasts. It is smoothed (a five-year average of deaths around each age), as single ages can jump around.
• The median and most common ages are calculated here from ONS's life tables. They match ONS's own published figures for 2015–2017 and 2018–2020 to within about a quarter of a year in almost all cases.

This chart appears in Life expectancy.