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In 2024, life expectancy for both males and females at birth rose when compared to 2023. Male life expectancy increased from 78.82  years to 79.12 years, and from 82.77 years to 83.02  years for females. Throughout most of this period, there is a steady rise in life expectancy for both males and females, with improvements in life expectancy beginning to slow in the 2010s and then declining slightly at the start of the 2020s.

Life expectancy since the 18th Century

Although there has been a recent dip in life expectancy in the UK, long-term improvements to life expectancy stretch back several centuries. In 1765, life expectancy was below 39 years and only surpassed 40 years in the 1810s, 50 years by the 1910s, 60 years by the 1930s, and 70 by the 1960s. While life expectancy has broadly improved since the 1700s, this trajectory was interrupted at various points due to wars and diseases. In the early 1920s, for example, life expectancy suffered a noticeable setback in the aftermath of the First World War and Spanish Flu ·¡±è¾±»å±ð³¾¾±³¦.Ìý

Impact of COVID-19

While improvements to UK life expectancy stalled during the 2010s, it wasn't until the 2020s that it began to decline. The impact of COVID-19 was one of the primary factors in this respect, with 2020 seeing the most deaths in the UK since 1918. The first wave of the pandemic in the spring of that year was a particularly deadly time, with weekly death figures far higher than usual. A second wave that winter saw a peak of almost 5,700 excess deaths a week in late January 2021, with excess deaths remaining elevated for several years afterward.