Introduction

This paper summarises the Registrar General for Scotland’s life expectancy figures for the period 2003-2005 for administrative areas within Scotland and compares these with results for 1993-1995. It also details a historic time-series back to the period 1981-1983 to take account of the population estimates for the 1980’s which were revised following the 2001 Census and published on 30 September 2002.

Figures for 1991-93 to 2001-03 were provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the results published in this report use their methodology (go to Section 6.2 for more details). Life expectancy data is now produced by the National Records of Scotland to allow earlier publication of results.

The results for 2003-2005, given in Table 1 and Table 2, 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 Boards are ranked 1 to 19 and include information for the 15 old NHS Board areas as well as the new Board areas created following the dissolution of NHS Argyll & Clyde on 31st March 2006. NHS Argyll and Clyde was split between Greater Glasgow and Highland resulting in two new NHS Board areas named Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Highland. This paper reports results for the old and new areas as well as the two parts of NHS Argyll and Clyde. Go to Section 5 for more information about the dissolution of Argyll and Clyde NHS Board and Section 4.3 for more information about the reliability of the results.

The figures quoted in this publication are all period life expectancies. Period life expectancies are calculated using age specific mortality rates for a given period with no allowance for any later actual or projected future changes in mortality after that period.