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Life Expectancy at Scotland Level

7 August 2009

Scottish Interim Life Tables

The Government Actuary's Department (GAD) was formerly responsible for producing national life tables, which give statistics on expectation of life. Each year ungraduated Interim Life Tables were produced for the United Kingdom and each of its constituent countries, using data for a period of three consecutive years.

On 31 January 2006, responsibility for the production of national Interim Life Tables (and Decennial Life Tables - see below) transferred to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Table 1 - below - contains period life expectancy for Scotland back to 1861-70. Each life expectancy figure is based on aggregate mortality rates for the groups of years shown. The data provides a historical comparison in which fluctuations in mortality that occur between calendar years have been smoothed out to some extent.

Table 2 - below - shows extracts from the most recent Scottish Interim Life Tables (also known as period life tables, ungraduated life tables and national life tables) for selected ages. Historic Life Tables (for UK and its constituent countries) or further detail on life expectancy for specific ages not presented in Table 2 is available on the GAD website Historic Interim Life Tables.

The files below have been made available as Excel spreadsheets and can be viewed in Comma Separated Value (CSV) or Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF).

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Table 1	Expectation of life, by sex and selected age, Scotland, 1861 to 2008 (Excel CSV PDF)
Table 2	Extract From Interim Life Table by sex and age, Scotland, 2006 to 2008 (Excel CSV PDF)

Scottish Decennial Life Tables

Up until the end of January 2006, the Government Actuary Department (GAD) prepared a set of Scottish Decennial Life Tables every ten years (since 1930-32 and excluding 1940-42) on behalf of the General Register Office for Scotland. On 31 January 2006, responsibility for the production of National Life Tables (interim and decennial) transferred to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The Decennial Life Tables (also known as 'Graduated' or 'Smoothed' Life Tables) are associated with decennial population censuses in that they are constructed based on the mortality experience of the population of Scotland during the three years centred on a census year.

In the past, Scottish Decennial (and Interim) Life Tables were made available as a supplement to the Registrar General's Annual Report. This is no longer the case. Instead Decennial Life Tables can be found below and the latest Interim life Table can be found above (historic Interim life tables are available via the following link: GAD Life Tables Index).

Also available are Decennial Life tables for each of the other UK constituent countries via the following link: National Statistics Online - English Life Tables.

Table 3	Scottish Decennial Life Tables, 1930-32 to 1990-92 (Excel PDF)
Table 4	Scottish Decennial Life Tables, 2000-02 (Excel PDF)

Please see our Methodology page for a brief description of the graduation process used in the calculation of Decennial Life Tables and a definition of notations displayed in the life tables. Alternatively, visit the ONS website (National Statistics Online - English Life Tables) for a fuller description of the methodology.

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