Mortality Rates and Life Expectancy

Knock knock: is anyone interested in what has been going on for a decade?

This week, the House of Lords looked at mortality rates among men and women and the impact of austerity. They pointed to a study that showed life expectancy had slowed in the UK since the early 2010s, claiming over 300,000 excess deaths.

The study analysed trends in age-standardised mortality rates and reported that for those living in the most deprived areas, mortality increased between 2010/2012 and 2017/2019 among women but not men, with roughly 335,000 more deaths than expected. 

To look into this claim, we checked the number of deaths, crude mortality, age-adjusted mortality, and life expectancy in the UK.

The number of deaths 

There were 581,298 registered deaths in 2023. The figure shows the fluctuations over the last 180 years. It is easy to see the 1918 pandemic and the start of the war, but some past pandemics (1957, 1968 and 2009) didn't give rise to many fluctuations in death rates. 

What’s noticeable is the fall in deaths in 2011 to a low of 484,367. From 2001 to 2011, circula…