You may have noticed in the news lately that the increases in life expectancy are ‘grinding to a halt’ in the UK. The Office for National Statistics in England and Wales has reported that improvements in life expectancy between 2015 and 2017 have stalled. The graph below shows the trend in life expectancy since 1838 showing there has been a consistent rise since the 1880s.
Source: ONS “Period expectation of life (ex) by single year of age – from English Life Tables No.s 1 to 17”. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/datasets/2englishlifetables
Crystallise analyses weekly mortality data for England and Wales and drew the same conclusion in the winter of 2017-18 that mortality rates were not improving and possibly increasing. Below left is the combined male and female central mortality rates for 65-year-olds as of the 8th of May 2018. The globally smoothed trend was clearly rising in early 2017.