Indicator
Map of healthy life expectancy at birth by local authority
Published
15 February 2023
Last updated
25 February 2025
Time to read
About 2 mins
About 2 mins
Key points
- Healthy life expectancy varies across the UK. Men and women living in Scotland, the North of England, East Midlands and Wales tend to have a lower-than-average healthy life expectancy at birth. People living in the South of England and London tend to have a higher-than-average healthy life expectancy at birth.
- At upper-tier local authority level, there is a difference in healthy life expectancy at birth of 24 years for women and 22 years for men. The average difference for men and women combined is 23 years.
- The biggest gap in female healthy life expectancy at birth between local authorities is between the Orkney Islands (74.1 years) and Merthyr Tydfil (50.1 years).
Healthy life expectancy – a summary metric reflecting mortality rates and self-reported health in a given place and time – is commonly used as an indicator of the health of a country as a whole and to highlight inequalities across different areas within a country.
This map shows healthy life expectancy for women and men at birth for each upper-tier local authority in the UK in 2022– 24.
- The local authorities with the highest life expectancy at birth are Orkney Islands (72.9 years for men and 74.1 years for women), Richmond upon Thames (69.3 years for men and 70.3 years for women), and Shetland Islands (68.3 years for men and 70.8 years for women).
- The local authorities with the lowest healthy life expectancy at birth are Blackpool (50.9 years), Merthyr Tydfil (51.7 years) and Hartlepool (52.1 years) for men, and Merthyr Tydfil (50.1 years), Hartlepool (51.2 years) and Sandwell (51.3 years) for women.
- Healthy life expectancy is below 55 years in all of the 20 local authorities with the lowest female and male healthy life expectancies. For men, 6 of these local authorities are in the North West and 5 are in Scotland. For women, 5 of these local authorities are in Scotland and 4 are in the North West of England.
- In 98 local authorities (45% of all local authorities), healthy life expectancy for both men and women is below 60 years. The North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West are overrepresented here.
- Healthy life expectancy measures the number of years an individual is expected to live in good health, based on period life expectancy and a measure of self-rated health. Period life expectancy is calculated using age-specific mortality rates of a given area and point in time and assuming these will stay the same throughout a person’s life.
- Figures are not available for the City of London and Isles of Scilly due to small numbers of death and population.
Source: Office for National Statistics, Healthy life expectancy, UK, 2022–24.
