Vital Events Reference Tables 2002

Section 5: Deaths

Expectation of life is the average number of additional years a person could expect to live if current mortality trends were to continue for the rest of that's person's life. Most commonly cited is life expectancy at birth.The information presented on life expectancy in Tables 5.4 and 5.5 has been produced by the Government Actuary's Department (GAD). The information on life expectancy in Table 5.4 is based on mortality rates for the latest three years. This provides an historical comparison between fluctuations in mortality, which occur in calendar years. Table 5.5 is based on mortality at single year of age rather than mortality on a group of ages. Further detail on life expectancy for specific ages not presented in Table 5.5 or complete life tables for earlier years can be obtained by contacting Statistics Customer Services (e-mail: statisticscustomerservices@nrscotland.gov.uk) or GAD.

'Life Tables 1990-1992', published as the First Supplement to the 1996 Annual Report of the Registrar General for Scotland, contains details on how GAD prepares the full life tables for Scotland.

Note: the death rates given in the tables in this section have been superseded. They were produced using the original mid-year population estimates for 2002 onwards, which have been superseded by 'rebased' population estimates which take account of the results of the 2011 Census. Revised versions of these figures (which were produced using the 'rebased' population estimates) can be obtained from revised versions of the Vital Events Reference Tables for 2012.

More information about the rebasing of the mid-year estimates, and the consequential temporary break in some of the Vital Events statistics series (such as birth rates and death rates) is available from the Births and Deaths Rates: breaks in series circa 2011 section of this website.

Correction: 27 February 2014
Table 5.2
Unfortunately, the originally-published version of Table 5.2 showed no 1-4 year old deaths in any Council area, even though it gave the correct figures for 1-4 year old deaths for Scotland as a whole and for individual Health Board areas. The Council areas' figures for the other age-groups were correct. We do not know the reason for the error (which, we assume, occurred when the table was produced in 2003). Table 5.2 was corrected on the website on 27 February 2014. We apologise for any problems that may have been caused by this error.

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