Press Statement

Preasráiteas

07 July 2020

Go to release: Irish Life Tables No. 17 2015-2017

The CSO has today (7 July 2020) released the Irish Life Tables No. 17 2015-2017 report.  

Commenting on the report, Carol Anne Hennessy, Statistician, said: ‘Male life expectancy at birth rose 22.2 years (or 38.7%), over the 90-year period from 1926 to 2016, to 79.6 years.  The comparable life expectancy for females over the same period was 83.4, an increase of 25.5 years (or 44.0%) from 1926 when life expectancy was 57.9 years. Although, female life expectancy at birth has always been higher than for males, the gender gap has been narrowing since 1991, when it was 5.6 years, to 3.8 years in 2016. 

While life expectancy increased across all regions for both males and females since 2011, males in the Mid-East region had the highest life expectancy at 80.3 years. Females in the West region had the highest life expectancy at 84.5 years in 2016, a rise of 1.2 years since 2011.

The average male life expectancy at birth across the EU 28 was 78.2 years in 2016. Ireland, at 79.6 years, was above the EU average and ranked the eighth highest. Irish male life expectancy was 1.4 years behind Italy which had the highest life expectancy at 81.0 years. The average life expectancy at birth for females in the EU 28 was 83.7 years. Ireland, at 83.4 years, was slightly below the EU average and was the fifteenth highest among the EU countries. Spain had the highest female life expectancy in 2016 at 86.3 years.

The largest gender gap in life expectancy in Europe was in Lithuania with 10.6 years between males (69.5 years) and females (80.1 years) at birth. The Netherlands had the smallest gender gap at 3.2 years (at 80.0 and 83.2 years respectively).’

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