Children born this year to surpass 90 years

The life expectancy of children born this year in Ireland has been estimated at over 90 years.

In a paper published in June’s Irish Medical Journal (IMJ), researchers reported a female born in Ireland in calendar year 2020 can be expected to live to 92.6 years, with a 95 per cent prediction interval around this estimate of 86.8 years to 97.3 years.

For males born this year, they added, the central estimate was 90 years with 95 per cent prediction interval of 83.9 years to 95.2 years.

The researchers, Whelan and Naqvi, wrote that period life expectancies for the Irish population were projected and published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the United Nations (UN).

Their article, they added, estimated cohort life expectancies at birth in Ireland over the remainder of the 21st century together with 80 per cent and 95 per cent prediction intervals consistent with these official estimates.

“Life expectancies in Ireland have shown a marked increase since statistics on births and deaths were systemically collected by the State after the Registration of Births and Deaths (Ireland) Act of 1863,” they added.

Noting that over the course of the 20th century, period life expectancies for females increased by, on average, 0.3 years with the passage of each calendar year, and 0.25 for males; they said mortality improvements were concentrated at the earlier ages in the first decades of the 20th century but became more evident at later ages as the century progressed in a pattern sometimes referred to as “the ageing of mortality improvements”.

Life expectancies in Ireland were forecast by the CSO as part of their population projections and also by the UN, the researchers explained.

However, both agencies forecast period life expectancies which were estimated from mortality rates observed at each age over a particular period in the past (usually a calendar year or group of years).

This meant that period life expectancy at birth according to the most recent Irish Life Tables published by the CSO related to the mortality experience observed over the calendar years 2010 to 2012 and show period life expectancy at birth as 82.8 years for females and 78.4 years for males.

“However, period life expectancies do not give a measure of how long a person will live because, as the CSO makes clear: ‘Period expectation of life… is therefore, not the number of years someone of that age could actually expect to live because death rates are likely to change in the future’,” the researchers clarified.

Cohort life expectancy addressed the issue of how long a person can be expected to live because it estimated life expectancy not from historic mortality rates, but from the (projected) mortality rates the person can be expected to experience as the individual ages, they continued.

IMJ; Vol 113, No. 6, P96