Scottish life expectancy still lower than pre-pandemic

Between the early 1980s and early 2010s, life expectancy increased every year in Scotland.

It plateaued around 2012-2014 – mirroring the slowing down in improvements to circulatory disease mortality – before figures started to drop in the years covered by the 2018-2020 figures.

This was largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Life expectancy improvements stalled as drug-related deaths and deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s increased, the report says.

It decreased for the third year in a row in 2020-2022.

Despite this year’s rise, compared to the 2017-2019 figures, life expectancy is still lower by 19.4 weeks for males and 18.2 weeks for females.