India had made significant strides in improving life expectancy at birth—from just 49.7 years in the early 1970s to 70 years by the 2016–20 period. This steady upward trend, sustained for nearly five decades, was abruptly interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. During 2017-21, life expectancy at birth declined to 69.8 years. The drop, though seemingly modest at 0.2 years, is a critical demographic indicator, especially for a country that had consistently made gains over the years. The decline is visible across both rural and urban populations. Urban life expectancy fell from 73.2 years in 2016-20 to 72.9 years in 2017-21, while rural figures dipped from 68.6 to 68.5 years over the same period. This reversal coincides with a significant rise in mortality in 2020 and 2021
Life expectancy at birth represents the average number of years a person is expected to live, assuming current mortality rates remain constant throughout their lifetime. The primary source for life expectancy estimates is the Sample Registration System (SRS), a large-scale demographic survey designed to provide estimates of fertility and mortality indicators. To con-struct life tables, India uses the MORTPAK 4 software—a mortality measurement package developed by the UN that generates abridged life tables using age-specific death rates (ASDRs) derived from SRS data. To minimise sampling variability and improve reliability, five-year averages of ASDRs are calculated separately for rural and urban areas and disaggregated by sex.
This was first published in the State of India’s Environment 2026
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