Life expectancy at birth, West Bengal

The average number of years a newborn would live if exposed throughout life to the age-specific death rates of the five-year period.

Methodology

The Sample Registration System (SRS) is ORGI's large-scale demographic survey: in about 8,800 randomly selected villages and urban blocks (8,839 sample units covering about 9.0 million people in 2024, roughly 0.6% of the population) a resident part-time enumerator records births and deaths continuously, and an independent supervisor conducts a retrospective half-yearly survey. The two records are matched and unmatched events re-verified in the field (dual record system), which makes SRS India's reference source for vital rates at state level, since civil registration remains incomplete in several states. The sample is redrawn after each census; the frame in use from reference year 2014 is based on Census 2011. Source: SRS Abridged Life Tables for the five-year period, Statement 3 ('Expectation of life at birth by sex and residence, India and bigger States/UTs'), Total column, for India and the 22 bigger States/UTs. ORGI pools five years of age-specific death rates to build an abridged life table (age groups 0, 1–4, 5–9 … 85+) and reads e0 from it. IHO stores each edition under its full years (for example 2020-2024). IHO stores the total (rural and urban combined) for V1; SRS also publishes rural and urban figures, and for some rates figures by sex, which are not yet stored.

Caveats

Successive editions overlap by four of their five years, so a change from one edition to the next reflects one year dropped and one added, not a year's progress. Every period from 2017–21 onward contains the 2020–21 COVID-19 mortality shock (India's e0 dipped from 70.0 in 2016–20 to 69.8 in 2017–21). Smaller States and UTs have no estimate.

Comparability

Age-standardised by construction, so suitable for comparing States, unlike the crude death rate. Up to the 2013–17 edition Andhra Pradesh's figure includes Telangana; those values are not stored, so Andhra Pradesh and Telangana start with 2014–18. Jammu & Kashmir's periods that include years before 2020 cover the undivided State, including Ladakh. Not comparable with the Census-based or UN World Population Prospects life tables, which use different data and methods.

How signals are computed from this series: methodology.