Life expectancy
Males and females born in Australia between 2022–2024 can expect to live on average to:
81.1 years (males)
85.1 years (females)
What is life expectancy?
Life expectancy is a common way of measuring population health. It shows how long a person can expect to live, on average, based on current age- and sex-specific death rates.
It is often reported as life expectancy at birth as the number of years a newborn is likely to live if current mortality rates stayed the same.
Life expectancy is estimated using current death rates for different age groups and for males and females in a population. These rates are applied to show the chance of dying at each age.
Life expectancy is calculated using a statistical tool called a life table. A life table is generated from current age- and sex-specific death rates in a given population. The resulting values are used to estimate the likelihood of someone in a hypothetical population dying before their next birthday.
Life expectancy is calculated using current death patterns in the population and assumes that death rates remain the same over time.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publishes life tables and calculates life expectancy for the total Australian population and for selected groups within the population (ABS 2025). These measures are based on 3 years of data to reduce the effect of year-to-year changes in death rates.
Life expectancy is related to the average age at death within a population and is inversely related to the population death rates at that time; that is, the lower the death rates the greater the life expectancy. It varies between population groups and over time. High life expectancy is often linked with lower death rates in infant and children, access to high quality health care and more people surviving to older ages.
Differences in life expectancy over time may be due to changes in the patterns of death due to certain conditions (see Trends in deaths). For example, in 1922, infectious diseases accounted for 15% of all deaths in Australia and on average people dying from these diseases were 27 years old. By comparison, in 2024, infectious diseases (excluding COVID-19) accounted for less than 2% of deaths and the average age at death for these diseases was 80 years. For more information on this and other causes, see the AIHW General Record of Incidence in Mortality (GRIM) books.
Health-adjusted life expectancy
Burden of disease measures include a measure of health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) which extends the concept of life expectancy by considering the time spent living with the health consequences of disease and injury. HALE reflects the average number of years of life expected in full health. The ratio of HALE to life expectancy, expressed as a percentage, represents the proportion of life expectancy that is spent in full health. For males born in 2024 (the most recent estimates), HALE was 71.7 years and for females it was 73.8 years. This equates to males and females, on average, living 88% and 86% of their lives in full health, respectively.
For more information, see Australian Burden of Disease Study 2024: Health-adjusted life expectancy.