What is happening to life expectancy in England?

There have been two turning points in trends in life expectancy in England this century. From 2011, increases in life expectancy slowed after decades of steady improvement, prompting debate about the causes. Then, in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was a more significant turning point, causing a sharp fall in life expectancy, the magnitude of which had not been seen since World War II. By 2024, as the pandemic effects subsided, life expectancy had reverted to its pre-pandemic 2019 level and, in 2025, it reached the highest level recorded for England.  

This article examines trends in life expectancy at birth up to 2024, the impact of Covid-19 on life expectancy, gender differences and inequalities in life expectancy, causes of the changing trends since 2011, and how life expectancy in the UK compares with other countries.  

How has life expectancy changed over time?

Mortality in England and Wales has declined since the 19th century, leading to a long-term rise in life expectancy (see Figure 1). Males born in 1841 could expect to live to only 40  years and females to 42 years, mainly because of high mortality rates in infancy and childhood. Improvements in nutrition, hygiene, housing, sanitation, control of infectious diseases and other public health measures reduced mortality rates, increasing life expectancy to 56 years for males and 59 years for females by 1920. 

The 20th century saw further dramatic improvements in life expectancy resulting from public health measures such as childhood immunisations, the introduction of universal health care, medical advances in treating adult diseases such as heart disease and cancer, and lifestyle changes, including a decline in smoking. By 2019, life expectancy at birth in England had increased to 79.8 years for males and 83.5 years for females (see Figure 2). However, the Covid-19 pandemic caused life expectancy to fall sharply in 2020 – by 1.3 years for males, to 78.5 years, and by 0.9 years for females, to 82.6 years – the same level as about a decade earlier. Life expectancy recovered thereafter as the pandemic subsided, rising by 2024 to the 2019 pre-pandemic level. Provisional data for 2025 shows a further increase in life expectancy, to 80 years for males and 83.8 years for females, taking it to the highest level recorded for England. 

What’s the difference in life expectancy between males and females?

Women live longer than men in all countries globally, but the gender gap has changed over time. In England the gender gap in 1841 (two years) was relatively small because of the high prevalence in the 19th century of diseases, for example infectious diseases, that killed both sexes indiscriminately. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the gender gap in life expectancy widened, peaking at 6.4 years by 1969 (see Figure 1). Reasons for the widening gender gap included poor working conditions and smoking among males in contrast to improved life chances for females – for example, the lower risk of dying in childbirth and from tuberculosis, which affected women more than men. 

The gender gap narrowed from the 1970s, to 3.7 years in 2019, with mortality falling faster in males than females because of decreases in smoking and mortality from cardiovascular diseases. However, in 2020 and 2021, the gender gap widened to 4.1 years (see Figure 2) because mortality rates from Covid-19 were higher in males than females; with the fall in Covid-19 mortality thereafter, the gender gap fell back to 3.8 years in 2025.  

Healthy life expectancy

For the three aggregated years 2022–24, although male life expectancy was 79.5 years, healthy  male life expectancy was only 60.9 years – ie, 18.6 of those years (23%) would have been spent in poor health. During this period, female life expectancy was 83.3 years and healthy life expectancy was 61.3 years, so 22 years (26%) would have been spent in poor health. Although females live an average of almost four years longer than males, they spend a higher proportion and more years of their lives in poor health.  

Healthy life expectancy in England was broadly unchanged in the pre-pandemic period, but it has fallen sharply since the pandemic (see Figure 3). In 2022–24, healthy life expectancy was 2.3 years lower in males and 2.4 years lower in females compared with 2017-19. So not only has life expectancy stalled, but males and females spend more years in poor health, reflecting the trend of increasing long-term sickness in recent years.  

 A goal in the government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England is to increase healthy life expectancy for everyone, which would require a reversal of this long-term declining trend.  

Similarly, disability-free life expectancy in 2020-22 was almost two decades shorter than life expectancy, and was higher among males (61.8 years) than females (60.5 years). 

Inequalities in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy

Life expectancy is affected by many factors – for example, behavioural risks to health such as smoking and poor diet; access to and use of health care; wider socio-economic determinants such as income, education, housing and employment; geography; and specific characteristics such as sex, ethnicity, disability and social exclusion. Differences in these determinants, some of which are discussed below, can lead to inequalities in life expectancy between population sub-groups.

Additionally, healthy life expectancy reflects differences in how individuals rate their own health, from good to bad. 

Socio-economic inequalities

Life expectancy in England shows a strong association with deprivation and is significantly lower for people living in more deprived areas than for people living in less deprived areas. Socio-economic inequalities in health have been widening since 2010. 

In 2022–24, males living in the least deprived 10% of areas in England could expect to live about a decade longer  than males in the 10% most deprived areas; for females the difference was 8 years (see Figure 4). The gap in healthy life expectancy is even greater – two decades. Hence people in deprived areas have shorter lives and spend a higher proportion of their lives in poor health.  

Figure 4 Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy by deprivation decile: England 

Source: ONS 2026.  

Gender differences in life expectancy are greater in more deprived areas: in 2022–24 females lived an average of 5.1 years longer than males in the most deprived 10% of areas, compared with 2.8 years longer in the least deprived 10%.  

Socio-economic inequalities in life expectancy were widening before the Covid-19 pandemic, which then exacerbated inequalities because of its disproportionate impact on people living in deprived areas. The life expectancy gap between the least and most deprived 10% of areas widened further by 1 year in both males and females in the decade preceding 2022–24 (see Figure 4). Another notable feature is that life expectancy fell in the most deprived 10% of areas by about 0.7 years in both males and females over the preceding decade, and showed smaller declines or no change in the second and third most deprived deciles; this contrasts with increasing life expectancy in all other deciles, with increases of about 0.5 years in the three least deprived deciles of areas.   

Healthy life expectancy in both males and females fell in all deprivation deciles from 2020–22 after the pandemic, and inequalities widened. A goal in the government’s renewed Women’s Health Strategy for England¹ is to increase female healthy life expectancy to 61 years in the poorest parts of the country, which would require a reversal of the declining trend and an increase of 12.8 years over the 2022–24 level of 48.2 years. 

The marked inequalities in life expectancy at local level illustrate the strong association with deprivation (see Figures 5 and 6). For example, Blackpool is the most deprived local authority nationally and has the lowest life expectancy for both males and females. Socio-economic inequalities in life expectancy can be marked even among neighbouring areas; for example, life expectancy in Blackpool is 7.6 years lower for males and 5.8 years lower for females than in Ribble Valley just 32 miles away, one of the least deprived local authorities. 

About one-third of the inequalities in life expectancy between more and less deprived areas are caused by higher mortality rates in the most deprived areas from heart and respiratory disease, and lung cancer. These conditions are caused largely by potentially preventable risk factors such as smoking and obesity, which are higher among more deprived groups. 

Geographical inequalities

The deprivation divide in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy reflects a persistent north–south divide in England, with people in the more affluent south having longer lives on average and with more years in good health than those living in the more deprived northern regions.  

Life expectancy in 2023–25 was lowest in the North East and North West followed by Yorkshire and the Humber, and West and East Midlands, and highest in London, the South East and South West, and East of England. The gap in life expectancy between the highest (South East) and lowest (North East) regions was three years. The inequalities were significantly wider for local areas within these regions.  

The north–south divide in life expectancy has persisted and widened over the past decade, reflecting widening socio-economic inequalities. Life expectancy has consistently been lowest in the North East and other northern regions (North West, Yorkshire and The Humber, East Midlands and West Midlands). These regions also experienced smaller improvements in life expectancy in the decade preceding 2023–25 compared with other regions, with male life expectancy remaining virtually unchanged. This contrasts, for example, with sharp increases in London (of 0.7 years and 1 year for males and females respectively) in the decade preceding 2023–25, despite London experiencing the sharpest fall in life expectancy during the pandemic.

As with life expectancy, there are wide geographical inequalities in healthy life expectancy in England. In 2022–24, healthy life expectancy in the North East was 6 years shorter for males and 7.4 years shorter for females compared with the South East. People living in northern regions also spend higher proportions of their shorter lives in poor health. Regional inequalities in healthy life expectancy have fluctuated around these levels for the past decade.    

The goal in the government’s 10 Year Health Plan for England is to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions within a decade; that would require a significant reduction in regional inequalities, which have remained persistently wide over the past decade.  

Ethnic inequalities

About 18% (11 million people) of the population of England and Wales is non-white, a rise from 14% in 2011. Until recently, ethnicity was not recorded at death registration in England. Following the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on ethnic minority communities, the government’s reforms to death certification in 2024 introduced the addition to death certificates of self-reported ethnicity from patients’ medical records. However, analysis of death records following introduction of the reforms shows the quality of ethnicity coding to be poor with, for example, a high proportion of deaths recorded with a ‘not known’ ethnicity.  

Before this requirement was introduced, ONS produced life expectancy estimates by ethnicity for England and Wales for 2011–14 by linking death records to 2011 census records to obtain ethnicity. The data showed that male and female life expectancy in 2011–14 was higher for ethnic minority groups than for the white and mixed groups, reflecting their lower mortality overall and from some conditions such as cancer, dementia and some other leading causes of death; however, mortality rates for some conditions (such as heart disease and diabetes) were highest in some ethnic minority groups. Similar mortality patterns were seen during 2012–19.   

The pandemic had a disproportionate impact on ethnic minority groups, who experienced higher Covid-19 mortality rates than the white British group. Covid-19 mortality rates declined in all ethnic groups over the course of the pandemic, and by 2022 rates for ethnic minority groups were no longer higher than for the white British group. Although data on ethnic differences in life expectancy is not available for recent years, ONS data shows that, as in the pre-pandemic period, by 2021–23, overall mortality rates were again lower in ethnic minority groups than in the white British group. Ethnic differences in cause-specific mortality rates also reverted to pre-pandemic patterns.    

These findings are consistent with other literature. A systematic review of ethnic differences in mortality in the UK reported lower all-cause mortality among ethnic minority groups compared with the white British group; only the white Irish and white Scottish groups had higher mortality.  

Lower mortality rates (resulting in higher life expectancy) for ethnic minority groups relative to the white British group may be due in part to the ‘healthy migrant effect’ (whereby people who migrate tend to be in good health) and lower rates of smoking and alcohol consumption in ethnic minority groups, which may mitigate some impacts of socio-economic disadvantage and racism. These paradoxical findings have been found also in other countries. Migrants to high-income countries such as the UK are a select group and often demonstrate lower mortality than non-migrants, despite experiencing socio-economic disadvantage.  

ONS data shows the mortality advantage in migrants and in UK-born generations wanes over time, possibly because of environmental and behavioural changes. Similar changes have also been observed in other countries.   

Inequalities among other groups

Some population groups have a significantly shorter life expectancy than the general population, for example:  

• Life expectancy in people with serious mental illness is 15–20 years shorter than the average for the general population; this disparity is largely due to preventable physical illnesses.  

• Men and women in England and Wales who are homeless at or around the time of their death live 31 years and 38 years fewer (respectively) than the average.  

• People with learning disabilities have significantly shorter lives than people in the general population; the median age at death of people with a learning disability is almost 20 years younger than in the general population.  

• Experimental statistics from ONS using data on sexual orientation from the 2021 census show that people in England and Wales who identified themselves as ‘gay or lesbian’, ‘bisexual’ or ‘other sexual orientation’ have a lower life expectancy at age 20 than people identifying as straight or heterosexual.    

How and why did trends in life expectancy change after 2011?

The pre-pandemic period, 2011–19

2011 marked a turning point in long-term mortality trends, with the falls tailing off after decades of steady decline. In the 100 years to 2010–12, life expectancy increased by nearly three years every decade, but between 2011 and 2019 it increased by only 0.7 years for males and 0.5 years for females.  

Several explanations have been suggested for the slowdown in life expectancy improvements between 2011–19 and the fall in life expectancy in 2015. They include the austerity-driven constraints on health, social care and other public spending and their adverse impact on services; the growing complexity of medical conditions and vulnerability to respiratory disease and other winter risks in an ageing population; widening health inequalities; decelerating improvements in cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality and periodic bad flu seasons seen also in many high-income countries.^1–12  Some European countries that did not adopt austerity policies also experienced slowdowns in life expectancy improvements (eg, Germany and Sweden), while life expectancy increased in other countries that had introduced severe austerity measures (eg, Spain, Ireland and Greece).¹³  

In some years the circulating strain of the flu virus has caused excess mortality in England – as in 2016–17, 2017–18, and especially in 2015, when life expectancy fell in almost all European countries (see Figures 7 and 8), which European monitoring agencies attributed to excess mortality from flu. In England and Wales, in 2015 deaths from respiratory diseases, including flu, were a key contributor to the largest annual rise in deaths since the 1960s and life expectancy fell by 0.2 years for males and 0.3 years for females – unprecedented for decades until the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

While a slowdown in improvements in life expectancy between 2010 and 2019 was seen in many European countries, the slowdown was greatest in the UK. It is likely that there were  several reasons for these trends, some specific to the UK (such as a greater impact from austerity and widening inequalities) and some common to the UK and other European countries – in particular, the slowdown in CVD mortality improvements.^{7, 10–16} The uptake of smoking by women occurred after it became common in men, and is cited as one possible explanation for the relatively small increases in female life expectancy in England and Wales.¹⁷ 

The Covid-19 pandemic 2020 

The slowdown in life expectancy improvements between 2011 and 2019 was nothing compared with what was to follow. In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic caused the largest fall in life expectancy in England since World War II: 1.3 years in males and 0.9 years in females (see Figures 1 and 2). Life expectancy did not revert to pre-pandemic 2019 levels until 2024.  

Although all European countries experienced devastating death tolls from Covid-19, and the impacts varied geographically in terms of timing and magnitude, several studies show that excess mortality in the UK during the pandemic (2020–22) exceeded that in most western European and other high-income countries; exceptions were Italy and Spain, which experienced high excess mortality early in the pandemic in 2020.^16,18-22  

Further details about mortality from Covid-19 are available in our explainer, Deaths from Covid-19 (coronavirus): how are they counted and what do they show?  

An independent public inquiry into the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to learn lessons for the future, is ongoing.

How does the UK compare with other European countries?

This section focuses on comparisons between the UK and selected high-income countries in the European Union (EU) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with the exception of the United States (US), where life expectancy has historically been lower than in other high-income countries. Within Europe, we focus mainly on western European countries as they are more comparable to the UK on economic measures than eastern European countries, where life expectancy has historically been lower. 

Figures 7 and 8 show trends in life expectancy for males and females in the UK and selected high-income EU and OECD countries. Pre-pandemic male and female life expectancy in the UK was below that of most comparator countries. As in the UK, improvements in life expectancy had slowed in many high-income countries between 2011 and 2019, but the slowdown was greater in the UK and its position relative to others worsened. 

In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, life expectancy fell in all but a handful of comparator countries (see Figures 7 and 8); the greatest falls were in Spain, Italy, Belgium, the US and the UK. Many eastern European countries also experienced large falls despite their lower life expectancies pre-pandemic. The exceptions to these widespread falls in life expectancy were Denmark, Finland, Norway, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, which – the pandemic notwithstanding – experienced small increases or no change in life expectancy in 2020.  

In most OECD countries, including the UK, life expectancy rallied somewhat in 2021 and 2022 as Covid-19 mortality subsided with the rollout of mass vaccination programmes, growing population immunity, and virus mutation to less severe variants. However, in most countries, it remained below the 2019 pre-pandemic level; the disruption to health systems and care for non-Covid conditions during the pandemic may have caused some excess deaths. Some countries (for example, in Scandinavia) that did not experience falling life expectancy in 2020 and 2021 because of stringent Covid-19 control measures instead saw it fall in 2022 as the restrictions were eased and populations were exposed to other infections and illnesses. By 2024, life expectancy for males and females in most comparator countries had recovered to pre-pandemic 2019 levels, as in the UK, or exceeded them.  

The combined impact of weak gains in life expectancy over the pre-pandemic decade, followed by relatively higher mortality during the pandemic and a slower recovery, has caused the UK’s life expectancy to slide further behind most comparable countries by 2024. Life expectancy in the UK is now lowest for both males (with the exception of Germany) and females (see Figures 7 and 8).  

An international comparison of trends in pre- and post-pandemic life expectancy in European countries (including the UK) showed that countries with the most sustained improvements before the pandemic (achieved by reducing CVD and cancer mortality) maintained improvements during the pandemic; the authors conclude that government policies that improve population health, eg, by reducing risk factors such as poor diets and inadequate physical activity, and ensure access to health care for prevention and treatment, also build resilience to future shocks. 

Conclusion

The fall in life expectancy in England resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic was unprecedented in recent decades. Life expectancy did not recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2024, when it was still only marginally higher than a decade ago. Of particular concern is that in 2022–24 life expectancy for people living in the 30% most deprived areas of England had fallen or remained unchanged compared with a decade ago. This is reflected in geographical patterns: life expectancy in the five northern regions has consistently been the lowest nationally and, in the decade to 2023–25, geographical inequalities have widened further, with little or no improvement in male life expectancy.  

Future improvements in life expectancy depend on many factors. Provisional data for 2025 shows an increase in life expectancy over 2024, taking it to the highest level recorded for England. Whether or not the increase will be sustained is unclear, given current trends in population health. The poor health of children, deterioration in population health, huge backlog of unmet health care needs (which pre-dated the pandemic and was exacerbated by it), almost 3 million working-age adults unable to work because of long-term sickness, persistent constraints on NHS capacity and widening health inequalities illustrate the scale of the challenges that need to be addressed. Added to these are the unpredictable risks of, for example, periodic resurgences in respiratory (including flu) or other viral infections, the health impacts of extreme climate change events such as the heatwaves in 2022, and the economic constraints and challenges facing the UK. Sustained improvements in life expectancy nationally will also require concerted action to tackle the wider determinants driving the persistence of poor health and stalling life expectancy among the large sections of the population living in northern and deprived areas. 

The government’s 10-year goal for England of increasing healthy life expectancy for everyone, and halving the gap in it between the richest and poorest regions, looks unrealistic. So does the goal of increasing women’s healthy life expectancy in the poorest areas by 13 years.² Achieving these goals would require improvements in population health on a scale not seen in recent decades to reverse the sharply falling trend in healthy life expectancy and widening inequalities since the pandemic.  

Life expectancy in the UK compared poorly with most comparator countries before the Covid-19 pandemic; higher excess mortality during the pandemic followed by a slower recovery has resulted in the UK’s further downward slide in international life expectancy rankings, with life expectancy now the lowest among comparator countries (with the exception of the US). Reducing health inequalities and improving population health and the UK’s life expectancy relative to comparator countries have never been more urgent and yet also more challenging.