1.1 This paper summarises the National Records of Scotland's life expectancy figures for the years 2011-2013 for administrative areas within Scotland. Alongside the new 2011-2013 figures, we have also published revised life expectancy estimates for Community Health Partnerships (CHP), by Urban Rural classification and Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) for the years 2001-2003 to 2008-2010. All the revisions are available in Excel workbooks on the National Records of Scotland website.
1.2 This paper reports on the 32 Council areas in Scotland, the new 2014 NHS Board areas in existence from 1 April 2014 and the 34 Community Health Partnership areas. Analysis of urban and rural areas, as defined by the Scottish Government's 6-fold Urban Rural classification version 2011-2012, and deprivation areas as defined by the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) 2012 is also included, along with comparisons between the estimates for 2011-2013 and those of previous three-year periods are also presented. Further information on the geographical areas and classifications used in this publication can be found in Section 6.
1.3 The estimates for 2011-2013, given in Table 6, Table 7, Table 8, Table 9, Table 10 and Table 11 have been ranked for ease of presentation. For Council areas, this means that '1' is the area with the highest life expectancy and '32' the lowest. Similarly, NHS Board areas are ranked 1 to 14 and Community Health Partnerships are ranked 1 to 34.
1.4 Life expectancy at birth provides a useful summary measure of mortality rates actually experienced over a given period. It also provides an objective means of comparing trends in mortality, over time, between areas of a country and with other countries. This is of use in monitoring and investigating health inequality issues across Scotland and in setting public health targets, particularly when used in conjunction with the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD). The Scottish Government currently has a high level purpose target to match European population growth over a 10 year period, supported by increased healthy life expectancy at birth. Healthy life expectancy is derived by combining estimates of life expectancy with survey data on self-assessed health (Section 7.3). Life expectancy is also used to inform pensions policy.