One of the great success stories of the last century has been improvements in life expectancy. In 1900 in Britain, life expectancy at birth was about 47 for a man and about 50 for a woman. Fast forward to 2018, and life expectancy has improved dramatically; to 79 years for men and nearly 83 years for women. But can these improvements to life expectancy continue forever? In the past few years, official data around life expectancy has prompted an interesting debate. Life expectancy improvements have been slowing and the cause of this slowdown has been contested by experts. New figures published by the ONS in August will add to the debate as they show that life expectancy in the UK has stopped improving for the first time since 1982, when figures began.