Life expectancy
Healthy throughout life
Metrics
- Life expectancy at birth
- Health‑adjusted life expectancy (HALE)
Why this matters
Increased life expectancy is one of the great success stories of the 20th century and has underpinned sustained improvements in the wellbeing of people's lives.
Adjusting life expectancy by years spent in full or ill-health recognises the aspiration of people to not only maximise their lifespan, but to maximise their years of healthy life.
Progress
Life expectancy at birth
In 2020-22, life expectancy at birth decreased for the first time since the early 1990's:
- life expectancy at birth was 81.2 years for males and 85.3 years for females, a decrease of 0.1 years for both from the previous year (2019-21)
- over the past decade (since 2010-12), life expectancy at birth increased by 1.3 years for males and 1.0 years for females (from 79.9 years and 84.3 years, respectively)
- around 30 years ago (1992), life expectancy at birth was 74.5 years for males and 80.4 years for females.
The 2020-2022 life expectancy calculations are the first to include deaths from all three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first two years of the pandemic had the two lowest mortality rates on record from all causes, however in 2022 the number of deaths increased by 20,000, with close to 10,000 of these being due to COVID-19. Despite slightly lower life expectancy in 2020-22, it is still higher than before the pandemic (80.9 years for males, and 85.0 years for females in 2017-19).
Health‑adjusted life expectancy (HALE)
In 2023, health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) was:
- 71.6 years for males, an increase from 71.5 years in 2018 and 69.4 years in 2003
- 73.6 years for females, a decrease from 74.0 years in 2018, but an increase from 72.8 years in 2003.
Between 2003 and 2023, the average proportion of life in full health changed little for both males (from 89% to 88%) and females (from 88% to 87%).
- The life expectancy used to calculate HALE in 2023 was derived from the ABS provisional deaths and projected 2023 YLD rates.
Differences across groups
A gap exists in life expectancy at birth between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous people. In 2020-22, the life expectancy at birth for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was:
- 71.9 years for males (8.8 years less than for non-Indigenous males)
- 75.6 years for females (8.1 years less than for non-Indigenous females).
Disaggregation
Further information about expectancy and HALE is available in ABS Life expectancy 2020-2022, ABS Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander life expectancy 2020-2022, and the AIHW Burden of Disease Study 2023.
Disaggregation available includes:
- Age
- Sex
- Remoteness
- Index of Relative Socio-Economic Disadvantage.