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.
• Cohort life expectancy is the average number of years people born in a given year are expected to live, allowing for how death rates are projected to change over their lives. It is higher than period life expectancy, because death rates are expected to keep falling.
• Cohort figures rely on ONS's projections of future death rates, so they are estimates and will change as new projections are made.

This chart appears in Life expectancy.