ONS: Life expectancy edges up

There has been a slight improvement in life expectancy of 4.7 weeks for both sexes at age 65, data published today shows.

A 65-year-old man can now expect to live a further 18.6 years until age 83, while a female could live a further 21 years until 86.

Life expectancy at birth in the UK also increased in 2016-18, to 79.3 years for males and 82.9 years for females; slight improvements of 3.7 weeks and 4.2 weeks for males and females, respectively, were observed from the previous dataset.

The relatively low increases in life expectancy at birth in 2016-18 suggest a continuation of a trend observed since 2011, where annual life expectancy improvements have slowed down in comparison with the previous decade.

Compared with similar countries, the UK has among the lowest life expectancy improvements for both males and females, according to the ONS.

The probability of reaching 90 years of age has remained the same in 2016-18, where one in five males and one in three females born in the period are likely to celebrate their 90th birthday.

Commenting, Helen Morrissey, pension specialist at Royal London, said: “With more people living into their 90s, we need to take a closer look at traditional views of retirement and whether they remain fit for purpose.

“With people living 30 years past traditional retirement age, government must deal quickly with the ticking time bomb of lack of appropriate retirement provision by looking at whether auto-enrolment minimum contributions need to be raised to help people save more.”

The ONS research follows LCP’s 2019 Longevity report, published in August, which suggests that the next version of the CMI’s mortality projections model, due to be published in 2020, will produce slightly longer life expectancies, increasing pension scheme liabilities.

A blog by Conor O’Reilly, head of analytics at Club Vita, published in August also pointed at a similar conclusion.