How long are you likely to live? And what are your chances of making it to 100? Today ONS published projections of life expectancy (LE) by age and sex. That means an update to their interactive LE calculator. Enter your age and sex for your LE, chance of making it to pension age, age 90 and 100.

Deaths rates in 2026 remain remarkably low, well below 2025's record low. Interesting question for actuaries is the extent to which this is indicative of the future, or whether the loss of the most frail during the pandemic means that rates are artificially low at the moment. Good news anyway!

Healthy life expectancy probably doesn't mean what you think it means. Often cited in the State Pension Age debate, recent headlines suggest we’re spending fewer years in good health - but there is a risk of misinterpreting these findings. This @financialtimes.com chart helps explain why.

A landmark day! The Tobacco and Vapes Bill received Royal Assent. It is now illegal to sell tobacco to anyone born from 2009. Our analysis found that 18-year-olds who never smoke could spend around a decade longer in good health than those who start smoking at 18 and remain lifelong smokers.

Includes comments from me on the impact on healthcare and pensions. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Today’s ONS projections show the UK population ageing further over the next decade, with pensioner numbers rising faster than the working-age population even after State Pension age increases to 67. That will add to pressure on the NHS, the State Pension and the wider public finances.

A nice companion piece to @actuarybyday.bsky.social's post yesterday. bsky.app/profile/actu...

If the UK were a US state, how would it rank? It depends entirely on what you measure! Fascinating table showing a startlingly different picture depending on the choice of metric. Source: www.linkedin.com/posts/diogo-...

Great to see this landmark bill agreed, with the prospect of a truly smoke-free generation, and more limitations on vaping. Smoking remains a major cause of ill health and early death and contributes to persistent health and life expectancy inequalities. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Death rates for cervical cancer in the United Kingdom have fallen by 80% since 1950— Cervical cancer death rates among women in the United Kingdom have fallen by around 80% since 1950. You can see this reduction in the chart. This progress happened for a couple of key reasons.

If I were a government minister and I had a magic wand, I think 'make people more aware of pensions and how they work' is the thing that solves so many political problems.

Are resident doctors still underpaid? The BMA’s case for industrial action is undermined by the way the union uses data. 1/6 www.thetimes.com/article/895f...

New CMI report on death rates in the first 3 months of 2026. Death rates were at record lows this winter! Based on death registrations, every week of 2026 saw death rates at or below the corresponding week of 2025, which itself had record low mortality. (1/3) www.actuaries.org.uk/learn-and-de...

What's one of the best ways to measure population health? We'd argue it's Healthy Life Expectancy - capturing not just how long we live, but how many of those years are spent in good health. New figures are out today. The picture isn't good. At a national level, England's HLE continues to fall.

Shocking chart alert! Patients waiting over 12 hours in A&E in England hit a new record high in January, exceeding 70,000 for the first time. In the past, it was rare for this number to exceed 1,000. This is only counting the waiting time after the decision has been made to admit the patient.

The CMI have released their first mortality monitor of 2026. Based on death registrations, death rates in each of the first 5 weeks of 2026 were lower than last year. Mortality year to date in 2026 is equal to the best years on record. www.actuaries.org.uk/learn-and-de...

Is life expectancy still increasing in the UK? A short thread on why experts have come to different conclusions in recent years but why I think the latest data clearly shows an underlying trend of increasing #longevity. 1/6

It won’t be popular with everyone but this has to be the correct decision. Government can’t pay billions in compensation to a wealthy cohort just because a few of them ignored the news for 15-20 years. Most can’t say what they’d have done differently with more notice. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If only there were some kind of useful lesson here about deploying more senior skills in triage outside of strike periods www.ft.com/content/c928...

GLP-1 drugs are grabbing headlines for weight loss, but the real story is the social dividend of a healthier population. Obesity costs the UK health system £11bn a year. A healthier population could reduce strain on NHS budgets & waiting lists. But interventions to keep people well are undervalued.

Hospital admissions with flu are back at "low" levels in England. www.gov.uk/government/s...

One of those quiet, incremental, good news stories that contributes to the ultra-long-term trend of the human condition getting better. Note also that in 2025, the small-but-early flu wave didn't do much to offset the progress.

For all of those who - think we are still in the middle of a raging pandemic 😷 - believe conspiracies about the covid vaccines 🤡 I have some more data for you to ignore or explain away

The CMI has released its analysis of 2025 mortality in England & Wales. Death rates for 2025 were nearly 2% lower than 2024, the previous record low. Death rates improved (i.e. fell) for both sexes and in all age groups between 2024 and 2025.

It was not a super flu year and why I think government and NHS messaging was wrong and counterproductive - my latest post christinapagel.substack.com/p/it-was-not...

Despite repeated doom-mongering, flu case numbers reached a plateau and have been falling steadily since mid-December. Just how bad is the current flu season is and are warnings it could be the worst in decades sensationalist? www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Don't say 'I told you so' Stuart, it's unedifying. 'Superflu' looking very much like normal flu. Worst flu season since... last year.

It was great to have the chance to contribute to the BBC 'More or Less' special series, 'the stats of the nation' yesterday. We focussed on health and life expectancy in the UK, and the challenges facing the NHS. 1/3 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

How do you perceive probability-based phrases? Take the quiz and see how you compare with the 500+ others who've done it so far...

ChatGPT is getting in on the 'your year wrapped' fad. Hard to argue with its take on my 2025! 𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑙𝑖𝑓𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑦 𝑡𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑜 𝑐𝑜𝑐𝑘𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑙 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐺𝐿𝑃‑1𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑝𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑚𝑎𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑟𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑔𝑜𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑝 𝑠𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑠𝑒𝑥𝑦. I can't promise to be much different in 2026. Anyway, happy New Year!

New post! There was a lot of innovation in medicine and biomedical research this year, and I've tried to summarize the biggest ones in this blogpost. Medical breakthroughs in 2025. Plus a serious note at the end. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/medical-br...

Brilliant! “It’s unaffordable but also it’s not generous enough and we should not reform it” perfectly encapsulates the cognitive dissonance in public attitudes towards the State Pension!

A (positive) pre-Christmas flu update, thanks to UKHSA for publishing a day early RSV (mostly affects the very young and very old) at a fairly high rate & some signs it is still rising, though

Flu numbers barely changed since last week and still in the medium band. Of course it is still possible that it spikes higher over the Christmas period but that doesn't seem the most likely outcome. Admissions with flu are considerably lower than 2022/23 peak.

With 3 weeks to go until the end of the year, the CMI has published its penultimate report on 2025 mortality rates. Mortality rates remain at record lows, about a 1.7% improvement on last year (when death rates equalled the previous record low in 2019). www.actuaries.org.uk/system/files...

Some more assessment of this from over on LinkedIn

Just want to share with my American friends how the Australians respond to a shooting tragedy. Action, rather than thoughts and prayers.

Was on Sky News this morning discussing Flu and whether this was a record bad year or not. Also discussed what we could do and the importance of vaccines, ventilation and wearing a mask if you're ill. youtu.be/_PZiU3R7jac

Sensible measured messaging from UKHSA. In sharp contrast to what we’ve seen elsewhere.

"A challenge unlike any since the pandemic" - really? Have we all forgotten about December 2022? Ambulance response times for category 2 emergencies like heart attacks and strokes hit 92 minutes on average! The target is 18 mins. Yesterday's data says 32 minutes. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🧵 Is it a super flu year? Who knows, but I think the current reporting is stupid. A pissed off thread using data. Firstly - here are today's headlines and some from the last 3 years... spot the difference. 1/10

The problem with a seasonal epidemic is that it's way too easy to write a sexy "flu numbers twice as bad as last year" headline, which is true but misleading, when you ought to be writing a "flu arrives a little earlier than last year" headline.

I've got to say, I'm not sure why this has become such a big media story. I might be wrong but my current view is that it's overblown. Flu arrived early, which is why it's breaking 'time of year' records, but it's only in the medium threshold and could peak lower than last year, let alone 2022-23.

Life expectancy in the UK has recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Yesterday, ONS released the latest National Life Tables and analysis of life expectancy in the UK. This is so called "period life expectancy", an objective but necessarily backwards-looking calculation. www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

Great that hospitals are currently exceeding government's 2% productivity growth target, though will be hard to sustain. It's no surprise though that this is barely denting waiting lists. My work (cited in NHS 10-year plan) showed that 2% pa needed just to stand still! www.ft.com/content/8c9b...

Disappointing outcome from trials looking at whether weight loss drug Semaglutide might delay Alzheimer’s disease progression. Reinforces how difficult it is to find effective treatments for Alzheimer’s and dementia.

I asked grok who was the better role model for humanity, Jesus Christ or Elon Musk. GUESS WHAT.

Thanks @actuarybyday.bsky.social , good to work with you on this. If people are interested in the Telegraph write-up, hopefully this link will work: www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/c0af53a...

Today @stevewebb1.bsky.social and I released a report setting out our views on where State Pension Age (SPA) needs to go. We submitted to this to the Government SPA review last month. We recommend sharp increases to SPA, but with a guaranteed payout of 5 years. 🧵 www.lcp.com/en/insights/...