SSA Actuarial Life Table: Columns, Reading, and Worked Example

The SSA Actuarial Life Table is a Social Security Administration chart that shows, for every age from 0 to 119 and separately for men and women, the probability of dying within the next year, how many people from a starting group of 100,000 would still be alive at that age, and the average number of years a person that age can expect to keep living. On the current period table, a 65-year-old man has 17.48 years remaining and a 65-year-old woman has 20.12.¹

What the Table Is and Who It Covers

The table is published by the SSA’s Office of the Chief Actuary and describes mortality across the “Social Security area population.” That population is broader than U.S. residents alone. It includes people in the 50 states, residents of U.S. territories, federal civilian employees and military personnel stationed abroad and their dependents, non-citizens abroad who are insured for Social Security, and other U.S. citizens overseas.¹

Because the group is so wide, the numbers differ from life expectancy tables published by private insurers. Insurance tables reflect policyholders who passed medical underwriting, so those populations are healthier on average. The SSA table reflects everyone in the system, healthy or not. If you compare SSA figures against numbers from an insurance company or a research study and they don’t match, this is usually why.

The Three Columns You Need to Read

The main table is laid out in single-year age rows, with parallel columns for males and females. Three columns do almost all the work.

Death probability, written q_x. The chance that a person exactly age x will die before turning x+1. At age 65, this value is 0.017897 for men and 0.011018 for women, or roughly 18 in 1,000 and 11 in 1,000.¹

Number of survivors, written l_x. Out of a hypothetical 100,000 people all born at the same time, how many are still alive at exact age x. The table starts with l₀ = 100,000 and each row is calculated by multiplying the previous row’s survivors by (1 − q).²

Life expectancy, written e_x. The average number of additional years a person at exact age x is expected to live. This is the column most readers actually want. It is calculated by dividing total person-years remaining for the group by the number of survivors at that age.³

The table ends at age 119, where death probability is set to 1.000000 for both sexes. That is a modeling assumption to close out the calculation, not a claim about the biological limit of life.¹

A Worked Example at Age 65

Say you’re a 65-year-old woman looking at the 2022 period life table (the version used in the 2025 Trustees Report). Find the row for age 65 and read across to the female life-expectancy column: 20.12 years. That means the average woman your age in this population is projected to live to about 85.¹

It’s an average across the whole population. Half of 65-year-old women will live past 85 and half won’t. The survivor column tells you how the group thins out year by year, and the death-probability column tells you the one-year risk at each age.

The Birth-Versus-Current-Age Mistake

The most common mistake is reading life expectancy at birth as if it applied to you now. A man born in 2022 has a life expectancy at birth of 74.74 years, and a woman 80.18.¹ But those numbers include everyone who dies in infancy, childhood, and early adulthood. If you’re already 65, you’ve cleared all of that. Your remaining life expectancy at 65 is 17.48 years (male) or 20.12 years (female), which projects to roughly 82.5 or 85 — several years past the birth figure. For retirement planning, always read from your current age row, not from age 0.

Period Table Versus Cohort Table

The SSA publishes two kinds of life tables, and the difference matters for anyone using the numbers to plan.

A period life table takes the death rates observed in a single calendar year and applies them, unchanged, at every future age. It’s a snapshot of current mortality: if the risks stayed frozen where they are now, here is how long you’d live. The 2022 period table shows 17.48 remaining years for a 65-year-old man.¹

A cohort life table follows a specific birth-year group forward and adjusts the death rate at each future age for projected improvements in medicine, public health, and living conditions. Under the 2025 Trustees Report’s intermediate assumptions, a man turning 65 in 2026 has a cohort life expectancy of 19.3 years and a woman turning 65 in 2026 has 21.9 years.⁴ That is about two years longer than the period figures in both cases.

For long-term planning — how long your savings need to last, how many years of benefits you might collect — the cohort table is the better fit, because it accounts for future mortality improvements. The period table is more useful when you want to compare mortality across calendar years or between populations without mixing in projection assumptions.

Current Figures at a Glance

The 2025 Trustees Report’s intermediate cohort projections for people born in 2026:⁴

Life expectancy at birth, male: 82.6 years
Life expectancy at birth, female: 86.8 years
Additional years at age 65, male: 19.3 (to about 84.3)
Additional years at age 65, female: 21.9 (to about 86.9)

The 2026 period projections, which don’t account for future improvements, are lower: 18.5 additional years for a 65-year-old man and 21.0 for a 65-year-old woman.⁵ The gap between the two versions is roughly what future medical and public-health progress is expected to add.

What the Table Can and Can’t Tell You Personally

The SSA table reflects averages for the entire covered population. It does not adjust for race, income, education, occupation, or health status, all of which affect individual longevity. Someone in good health with no serious chronic conditions will, on average, outlive the table’s projection. Someone with significant health problems may not reach it. Read your row as a midpoint for people your age and sex, not as a prediction about you.

The table also doesn’t tell you when you’ll die, only how the risk is distributed across future years. Two people the same age with the same life expectancy on paper can have very different outcomes; the number is what averages out across the whole group.

Where to Find the Official Table

The Office of the Chief Actuary maintains the tables at ssa.gov:

The main single-year actuarial life table, with q_x, l_x, and e_x for ages 0 through 119, is at ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html.¹
Historical and projected period tables from 1900 through 2100 are available through the OCACT Period Life Tables page.⁶
Period and cohort projections appear in Tables V.A4 and V.A5 of the annual Trustees Report.⁷
For a quick personal read without opening the table, SSA offers a life expectancy calculator at ssa.gov/oact/population/longevity.html that returns your average remaining years based on your sex and date of birth.⁸

For the technical definitions behind each column and how the mortality assumptions are built, Actuarial Study No. 120 is the reference document.³

1
Social Security Administration. Actuarial Life Table
2
Social Security Administration. Definitions of Life Table Functions
3
Social Security Administration. Life Tables for the United States Social Security Area 1900-2100
4
Social Security Administration. Cohort Life Expectancy – 2025 OASDI Trustees Report
5
Social Security Administration. Period Life Expectancy – 2025 OASDI Trustees Report
6
Social Security Administration. Period Life Tables
7
Social Security Administration. Unisex Life Expectancy at Birth and Age 65
8
Social Security Administration. Retirement and Survivors Benefits: Life Expectancy Calculator