The Government Actuary's Department was formerly responsible for producing national life tables, which give statistics on expectation of life. Every ten years the department prepared a set of graduated (smoothed) life tables for England & Wales (known as the English Life Tables) and for Scotland, using data for years around a census. Each year ungraduated interim life tables were produced for the United Kingdom and each of its constituent countries, using data for a period of three consecutive years.
On 31 January 2006, responsibility for the production of national life tables transferred to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Historic life tables are still available on the GAD website. However, for the latest data and any life expectancy related enquiries should be directed to ONS. Click the link for contact details.
For the latest interim life tables, click the link.
For historical interim life tables from 1980-82 to 2004-06, click the link.
For historical and latest English Life Tables (1 to 16), click the link.
The expectation of life figures shown in the Interim life tables are period life expectancies. These give, for a given age and country, the average number of years a person would live, if he or she experienced the particular country’s age-specific mortality rates for that time period throughout his or her life. It makes no allowance for any later actual or projected changes in mortality. In practice, death rates are likely to change in the future so period life expectancy does not therefore give the number of years someone could actually expect to live. Also, people may live in other areas for at least some part of their lives.
Cohort life expectancies are calculated using age-specific mortality rates which allow for known or projected changes in mortality in later years and are thus regarded as a more appropriate measure of how long a person of a given age would be expected to live, on average, than period life expectancy.
For further information on the difference between period and cohort life expectancy and access to additional period and cohort life expectancy data tables please click the link.