Life Expectancy for Administrative Areas within Scotland, 2006-2008

24 September 2009

The Registrar General for Scotland today published a report on life expectancy in Scottish Council and NHS Board areas.

The report, based on the period 2006-2008, shows that life expectancy at birth for Scotland has improved over the last 10 years from 72.4 years to 75.0 years for men and 78.1 years to 79.9 years for women.

Commenting on these results, Registrar General for Scotland Duncan Macniven said:

The key points in this report for 2006-2008 are:

At Birth

Life expectancy at birth for Scotland was 75.0 years for men and 79.9 years for women;
Life Expectancy varied considerably across Scotland;
For men and women, the Council area with the highest life expectancy was East Dunbartonshire (78.0 years and 82.5 years respectively). This was 7.3 years more for men and 5.3 years more for women than Glasgow City which had the lowest life expectancy for both genders.

At age 65

At age 65, men could expect to live for a further 16.3 years and women a further 18.9 years;
The Council area with the highest life expectancy at age 65 for men and women was Shetland (17.9 years and 20.4 years respectively), 4.1 years for men and 3.0 years for women more than Glasgow City, which had the lowest life expectancy.

Compared with 10 years ago in 1996-1998

In the ten years since 1996-1998 life expectancy at birth for Scotland has increased by 2.6 years for men and 1.9 years for women;
The gap between men and women continues to close, dropping from 5.6 years to 4.9 years over the period;
Although some areas had only very small increases in life expectancy over the 10 year period, there were no areas (Council or NHS Board area) where life expectancy decreased;
For men, the gap between the Council area with the highest life expectancy and the Council area with the lowest life expectancy decreased by 0.2 years – from 7.5 years in 1996-1998 to 7.3 years in 2006-2008. Whereas, for women, the gap increased by 0.4 years – from 4.9 years to 5.3 years. For NHS Board areas the gap decreased for both men and women by 0.3 years;
Among Council areas, the biggest rise in life expectancy since the period 1996-1998 was in West Lothian (4.0 years) for men and East Dunbartonshire (3.1 years) for women. The smallest rise in life expectancy was in Orkney (1.1 years) for men and Moray (0.5 years) for women.

Comparison with EU-27

Scottish men and women have among the lowest life expectancy at birth in Europe. Only the Eastern European states which joined the EU on 1 May 2004 and 1 January 2007 have lower figures. Scottish men can expect to live at least 1 year less than the EU average, and Scottish women can expect to live 2 years less. For both genders, the expectation of life is 4.0 to 4.5 years lower than the countries with the highest expectation of life.

The full publication Life Expectancy for Administrative Areas within Scotland,
2006-2008 is available on this website.