Life expectancy

07. May 2024
Women outpace men in life expectancy gains

Life expectancy is measured in the average number of years a man or a woman is expected to live, assuming that the observed death rates for this and older age groups remain the same as in the current year.

Life expectancy figures show how long people lived in the current year and therefore do not show how long they will actually live. To prevent these annual fluctuations from disturbing the overall picture, the LOWESS-method (LOcally WEighted Scatterplot Smoothing) is used to smooth out the numbers. Read more about this at the bottom of this article.

Longer life expectancy

The life expectancy from birth now stands at 85.2 years for women and 79.7 for men in the Faroe Islands. The latest figures show that the life expectancy for women has gone up, while it has gone down for men. For women, women’s life expectancy increased by 2 years since the previous report, while men’s life expectancy decreased by about 6 months. In the previous report, both sexes saw a drop in life expectancy of about 2 years.

Although the latest report shows that men’s life expectancy has gone down, the adjusted figures show that the long-term trend is continuing, with both sexes seeing a significant increase in life expectancy.

There is still a difference between the sexes. Women have a longer life expectancy than men. This difference is, however, shrinking as life expectancy has increased more for men than for women. The difference between the sexes has dropped from 7.1 years in 1985/86 to 4.6 years today.

This can be seen in the graph below, which shows the calculated and adjusted life expectancy for men and women since 1985/86.

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Life expectancy after 65 

Life expectancy can also be calculated by looking at remaining life expectancy, i.e. the average number of years a man or a woman at a certain age, e.g. 65, has left to live. As people age, they will have avoided certain risks associated with youth, which adds a few extra years to their expected life expectancy compared to a younger person.

This can be seen in the graph below. We see that a 65-year-old man can expect to live another 18.6 years – i.e. an expected life expectancy of 83.6 years. This is more than 4 years longer than the expected life expectancy of a newborn boy, which currently stands at 79.7 years.

A 65-year-old Faroese woman can expect to live another 22.8 years– i.e. an expected life expectancy of 87.8 years. This is almost 3 years longer than a newborn girl, who currently has an expected life expectancy of 85.2 years.

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Big gains in longevity in the past 40 years

Life expectancy in the Faroes has increased significantly since 1985. This applies to both sexes but especially for men.

For men, life expectancy calculated from birth has increased by just over 9 years (13%) since 1985/1986, while the figure for women increased by just under 7 years (9%) over the same period.

There has also been significant change from 1985/86 to today in the remaining life expectancy after age 65, rising by just over 4 years (25%) for women and 5 years (35%) for men.

The graph below shows the percentage change in life expectancy for men and women compared to the base period set at 1985/86.

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