Guide

Retirement usually lasts longer than people think

Around a 4 minute read

Ask people how long they expect to live and many will quote a figure close to the headline life expectancy, around 79 for men and 83 for women in the UK. For anyone already approaching retirement, that figure is too low, for two reasons.

1. You have already survived the early years

Headline life expectancy is measured from birth. It includes everyone who dies young, in childhood, in accidents or from early illness. Once you have reached 65, those risks are behind you, so your remaining life expectancy is higher than the birth figure suggests.

ONS figures for 2021 to 2023 put period life expectancy at birth at 78.8 years for men and 82.8 for women. At 65, the same figures show a further 18.5 years for men and 21.0 for women. That points to average ages at death of about 83.5 and 86.

2. Death rates keep falling

Those 2021 to 2023 figures are period figures. They assume today's death rates never change. In practice death rates have fallen for most of the last century, and the ONS projects that they will keep falling, though more slowly than before.

Cohort figures allow for this. On the cohort basis used by this calculator, a 65-year-old man starting in 2026 has an average of about 20.2 more years, against 19.1 on the period basis. For a woman of 65 it is about 22.9 years, against 21.5.

3. Average is not a planning number

Even the right average only tells you the middle outcome. Around a third of men and nearly half of women aged 65 will reach 90. For couples, the chance that at least one reaches 90 is close to two in three.