Life Expectancy – Scotland

For the most part of the 20th century, life expectancy increased year on year (with the exception of the impact of the world wars). That steady increase in life expectancy continued across the UK, and Scotland, until 2010. Since 2008-2010, the improvement in life expectancy started to slow and, from 2012-2014 until 2017-2019, any improvement in life expectancy stalled. Scotland has the lowest life expectancy of Western Europe and, over the last decade, the gap has widened with other European countries. (Life Expectancy in Scotland 2021-2023 – National Records of Scotland (NRS) Figure 7b)  The gap in life expectancy between the most and least deprived in Scotland has continued to widen highlighting the importance of the impact of wider determinants on life quality. For males in 2021-2023 there were 13.2 years difference between the most and least deprived deciles. For females the difference was 10.5 years.

Most recent figures (2021-2023) for Life Expectancy in Scotland show that it has increased 80.8 years for females and 76.8 years for males) since 2020-2022 but remains below that of the pre-pandemic years: in 2021-2023