Life expectancy

Healthy throughout life

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Release date and time
26/09/2025 11:30am AEST

Released 15/09/2025

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

Life expectancy at birth decreased slightly in 2021-23, following on from a similar decrease in the previous period (2020-22). 

  • Life expectancy at birth was 81.1 years for males and 85.1 years for females, a slight decrease of 0.1 years for males and 0.2 years for females from the previous period.
  • Over the past decade, life expectancy at birth increased by 1.0 years for males and 0.8 years for females.
  • The difference in life expectancy between males and females is 4.0 years.
  • Around 30 years ago (1993), life expectancy at birth was 75.0 years for males and 80.9 years for females, a gap of 5.9 years. 

Life expectancy estimates in 2021-2023 were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the death rate increased but was still lower than pre-pandemic levels. In 2022, the number of deaths increased by almost 20,000 deaths from 2021, with almost half of these being due to COVID-19. In 2023, 5,001 deaths were registered that were due to COVID-19, a decrease from 9,862 deaths in 2022.

Data Source
ABS Life expectancy

Health‑adjusted life expectancy (HALE)

In 2024, health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) was:

  • 71.7 years for males, an increase from 71.2 years in 2018 and 69.4 years in 2003
  • 73.8 years for females, an increase from 73.6 years in 2018 and 72.8 years in 2003.

Between 2003 and 2024, the average proportion of life in full health changed little for males (from 89% to 88%) and decreased for females (from 88% to 86%).

  1. The life expectancy used to calculate HALE in 2024 was derived from the ABS provisional deaths and projected 2024 YLD rates.
Data Source
AIHW Australian Burden of Disease Study

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).

Socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy are also evident. Analysis of PLIDA data shown in the graph below shows:

  • life expectancy in Australia is higher for people in more advantaged Index of Relative Socioeconomic Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD) deciles
  • the most disadvantaged deciles deviate the most from adjacent deciles
  • changes over time in life expectancy across IRSAD deciles are similar to those observed in Japan and more favourable than in Canada, the UK, and the USA.

Trends in life expectancy at birth across socioeconomic deciles, by sex (a)(b)

Line graph comparing life expectancy for males and females in the 10 deprivation deciles, as well as against other countries, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom and United States

Life expectancy was higher in each successively more advantaged decile. However, the most advantaged (D10) and the most disadvantaged (D1) deciles had the largest deviations from an adjacent decile.

Life expectancy gradually improved throughout the pre-pandemic period in D5–D10, peaking at 87·3 years for females and 84·7 years for males in D10 in 2018–20. In contrast, life expectancy showed little improvement and even declined in more disadvantaged deciles (D1–D4) before 2016–18, after which the increase in life expectancy accelerated. In the later phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020 onwards), the decline in life expectancy was observed in every decile, with the largest fall among females in the most disadvantaged areas.

The female life expectancy in all deprivation deciles in Australia was between the levels observed in Japan (highest) and the USA (lowest). However, male life expectancy in the four most advantaged deciles was higher than in Japan. Life expectancy in each deprivation decile in Australia was higher than the national average in the USA for both females and males. The life expectancy ranking of the USA and the UK particularly worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

  1. Socioeconomic deciles are based on the ABS Index of Relative Advantage and Disadvantage (IRSAD).
  2. For both males and females, life expectancy is highest among those in the most advantaged socioeconomic group (decile 10), and decreases progressively with each lower IRSAD decile, reaching its lowest in the most disadvantaged group (decile 1).
  3. Blue shading indicates the spread of life expectancy in Australia.
  4. Originally published in Timonin, S, Adair, T, Welsh, J, Canudas-Romo, V, (2025), 'Socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy in Australia, 2013–22: an ecological study of trends and contributions of causes of death’, Lancet Public Health 2025, volume 10, e599-e608, accessed 7 July 2025.

Data Source - Timonin, Sergey et al. (2025)

Disaggregation

Further information about life expectancy and HALE is available in ABS Life expectancy 2021-2023, ABS Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander life expectancy 2020-2022, and the AIHW Burden of Disease Study 2024.

Disaggregation available includes:

  • Age
  • Sex
  • Remoteness
  • Index of Relative Socio-Economic Disadvantage.

Post-release changes

25 September 2025

Health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) graph was updated to address a transposition error in the proportion of life in full health series.