Male life expectancy: the gains shift to old age
Federal Statistical Office data reveal a profound shift: falling infant and child mortality once drove the biggest gains. Today, health in later life shapes life expectancy far more.
Male life expectancy in Switzerland has risen sharply since the late 19th century. For the years 1876 to 1880 the historical life table records a value of around 41 years. In 2023 the figure stood at 82.2 years. Over barely a century and a half it has roughly doubled.
From around 41 to 82.2 years
The current figure, however, is no personal promise for a boy born today. It is a statistical period value: it calculates how many years a newborn could expect on average if the age-specific mortality conditions of a given year were to apply permanently. Future medical, social or health-related changes are not factored in.
That is precisely why it is worth looking behind the long curve. Not every additional year of life stems from the same development, and not every age group contributed equally to the rise across the whole period.
Early on, progress mainly saved young lives
In the first decades of the period observed, declining infant and child mortality in particular shaped the rise in life expectancy at birth. When fewer children died in their first year or in early childhood, the average value rose sharply. This arithmetic effect is large, because every averted early death involves many expected years of life.
That explains why life expectancy at birth could gain so quickly in historical comparison. Improvements in nutrition, hygiene, housing conditions, medical care and public health belong to the long-term context. The Federal Statistical Office analysis, however, attributes the initial rise primarily to declining infant and child mortality; it does not provide a simple ranking of individual causes.
Looking at the past thus corrects a widespread simplification: the doubling of life expectancy does not merely mean that people grow ever older at the end of life. At first it meant above all that far more people reached adulthood.
Today, mortality at older ages matters more
Since the middle of the 20th century the focus has shifted. Life expectancy at ages 60 and 80 has increased as well. Progress in prevention, diagnosis and treatment can therefore raise average life expectancy even when infant mortality is already very low.
For men who reached the age of 65 in 2023, further statistical life expectancy was 20.3 years. That does not mean every 65-year-old reaches exactly that age. But it shows how strongly mortality after retirement age also counts for the overall development.
Between 1990 and 2023, according to the Federal Statistical Office, male life expectancy at birth gained a further 8.2 years. The gap to women persists, though it has narrowed over the longer term. In 2023 men stood at 82.2 and women at 85.8 years.
Living longer is not the same as living longer in good health
Life expectancy alone says little about how those years are experienced. The Federal Statistical Office puts healthy life expectancy for men in 2022 at 70.7 years. Between that figure and life expectancy at birth in 2023 lies an arithmetic difference of more than eleven years. Because the indicators come from different survey years and are defined differently, no individual duration of illness can be derived from this. As a societal signal, however, the difference is relevant.
Population ageing increases the need for prevention, basic care, nursing and age-appropriate housing. The historical statistics therefore cannot be read as a success story alone. They also show that health policy increasingly starts where the earlier large gain has already been largely achieved: chronic diseases, functional independence and good care in old age.
The next advance will be measured less by whether life expectancy rises again. What matters is whether the additional years remain as many years in good health as possible.
