MOST of us hope to reach the final milestone birthday of 100 and get a card from the Queen.
And this calculator reveals your odds based on your gender and the year you were born.
To use the Office for National Statistics life expectancy calculator, click here.
According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), a male aged 50 can expect to live to 84 years old.
There is a one in four chance he will reach 93, but an even lower 4.4 per cent chance he will hit 100.
His wife, also 50 years old, has better odds, with a 7.4 per cent chance of becoming a centenarian.
Of course, life expectancies are averages and so won’t hold true for everyone. They are also based on assumptions nothing drastic will happen (such as a pandemic).
Your lifestyle, diet, weight, genetic make-up and wealth could all affect how long you will actually live for, with luck also playing a big role.
The ONS’ latest report on life expectancy in the UK reveals that one in five (19 per cent) of girls born this year will reach the ripe old age of 100.
The Government analysts also say a fewer 13.6 per cent of boys will become centenarians.
On average, boys born in the UK in 2020 can expect to live on average to age 87.3 years and girls to 90.2 years.
But the rates are lower than previous estimates – and experts blame the Covid pandemic.
A child born in the UK in 2020 will die nearly five years earlier than previously thought.
David Finch, assistant director of healthy lives at the Health Foundation think tank, said: “Today’s figures show that children born today can still expect to live longer than their parents.
“However, people living in the UK today are not expected to live for as long as previously predicted.
“The unprecedented increase in deaths caused by Covid-19 should end as we move beyond the pandemic, but there will be a lasting impact from the decade of stalling life expectancy prior to the pandemic.
“Girls born in 2020 are now expected to die 4.8 years earlier than was expected in 2012, and boys, 4.5 years earlier.”
Kids born last year will still see more years than their parents or grandparents.
A person currently 65 years old can expect to reach 85 (male) to 87 years (female) old.
In the future, the ONS predicts more than a quarter (27 per cent) of British girls born in 20 years’ time will live to be at least 100 years old.
The figure for boys is slightly less, at 20.9 per cent.
Life expectancy has drastically improved since the 19th century thanks to better housing, control of disease, vaccines and nutrition, to name a few factors.
Women have always lived longer than men, but the gap between the two genders has varied over time.
The King’s Fund reports: “The gender gap narrowed from the 1970s, to 3.7 years in 2019, with mortality falling faster in males than females because of decreases in smoking and mortality from cardiovascular diseases.
“However, the gender gap widened in 2020 to 4 years because mortality rates from Covid-19 were higher in males than females.”
The difference in chromosomes between men and women affects mortality, meaning women are biologically hardwired to survive longer.
But biological differences cover just one part of the story though and data shows that lifestyle choices also have a big impact on life expectancy between men and women.
For example, men tend to smoke more – therefore increasing their risk of illness.
It’s also known that people who live in richer areas live for more years than those in deprived areas – up to a decade longer.
It comes as a new study has shown people living in England’s so-called “left behind” communities were 46 per cent more likely to die from Covid-19 than those in the rest of the country.
“Left behind” neighbourhoods (LBNs) differ from regular deprived areas by having fewer social and cultural assets, on top of economic problems.
They are mainly found in the Midlands and North in de-industrialised areas – as well as coastal areas in the South.
The study found that people in these areas were seven per more likely to have died of Covid than in regular deprived areas.
People in these neighbourhoods can expect to live 7.5 fewer years in good health than their counterparts in the rest of England.
