Canadian Life Expectancy vs Your Term Length

Should you take a 10 year term or a 30 year one? It comes up in almost every first meeting I have, and most people expect the answer to hinge on how long they're going to live. It mostly doesn't. The mortality data is still worth reading, though, because it shows when the risk tends to show up and how long a surviving family's money has to last. Both of those feed straight into the term length you choose.

Here's what Canada's latest numbers actually say, updated for late 2026.

Where Canadian life expectancy sits right now

Statistics Canada published its 2024 death data on January 13, 2026, and it's still the most recent national release. Life expectancy at birth in Canada rose to 82.16 years in 2024, up from 81.68 years in 2023. That gain of 0.48 years puts it nearly back to the 2019 pre-pandemic level of 82.22 years (Statistics Canada, Deaths, 2024).

A few more figures from the same release:

• Life expectancy at birth in 2024 was 80.03 years for males and 84.29 years for females.
• British Columbia posted one of the largest provincial gains, up 0.62 years from 2023. B.C. females reached 85.07 years, above the 2019 figure of 84.96.
• There were 326,779 deaths in Canada in 2024, down 0.2% from 327,546 in 2023.
• Cancer was the leading cause of death at 26.2% of all deaths, followed by diseases of the heart at 17.7%.

Those estimates come from Statistics Canada's life tables, built from mortality rates observed over three year windows, most recently 2022 to 2024 (Life Tables, Canada, Provinces and Territories, 1980 to 2024). They describe a whole population over three years. They aren't a prediction about you.

An average is a midpoint, not a finish line

Say the number out loud and it sounds reassuring. Eighty two years. If you're 38, living in Coquitlam with a mortgage and two young kids, that feels like decades of runway.

The catch is that 82.16 sits in the middle of a very wide spread. Plenty of people die well before it, and when that happens it often lands in the years when a household carries the most debt and the least savings. Insurance isn't priced against the average. It's priced against the chance of the early case, which is why coverage bought in your thirties and forties costs far less per dollar of protection than the same coverage bought later.

So life expectancy is useful, just not for the job people give it. It doesn't set your term length. What it does tell you is how long a surviving spouse might need to fund a life on one income, and that can easily run twenty years or more.

Term length is really a question about obligations

The cleaner way to choose is to list what you're covering and write down the year each item ends.

• Mortgage. Years left on the amortization. That's a floor for your term length, not a ceiling.
• Kids to independence. Count from your youngest child's age to roughly 22, when post secondary and any RESP drawdown wrap up.
• Income replacement. How many working years until your RRSP, TFSA and workplace pension could carry the household on their own?
• Debts that don't disappear. Co-signed loans, a business line of credit, money borrowed from family.
• Your spouse's timeline. If one of you is older or out of the workforce, coverage may need to run past the mortgage payoff.

Take the longest of those and you have your starting answer. In Metro Vancouver the mortgage is rarely the item that decides it. Kids usually are, and Canadian families are starting later. In 2024, mothers aged 35 and older accounted for 27.1% of all live births, compared with 16.1% in 2000 (Statistics Canada, Births, 2024). The newest release, from September 23, 2026, shows the trend still climbing: the average age of mothers hit a new high of 31.9 years in 2025, up from 26.7 years in 1976 (Statistics Canada, Fertility and baby names, 2025). A parent whose first child arrives at 38 needs protection well into their late fifties. That's a 20 or 25 year term length, not a 10.

How the products line up with that

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada describes term life as coverage "for a fixed period, such as a term of 10 or 20 years, or until you reach a set age, such as 65 years old," and notes that your premiums may increase when you renew the policy (FCAC, Life insurance).

That renewal step is the part people underestimate. The Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association's 2026 edition, released in October, still describes term premiums as typically increasing over time in five, 10 or 20 year "steps," and says term insurance usually provides a right to convert to permanent insurance with the same insurer without further underwriting (CLHIA, Canadian Life & Health Insurance Facts, 2026 Edition). Two things follow:

• A term length that's too short doesn't really save money if you renew into a much higher step in your fifties.
• The conversion right is worth reading before you sign. It's your way out if your health changes and you still need coverage when the term ends.

For scale, the same report says 23 million Canadians own $6.2 trillion in life insurance coverage. Average life insurance protection per household is now $533,000, up from $509,000 in 2024 and roughly five times household income. Insured households in B.C. average about $559,000. Individual life now makes up 66 per cent of the value of policies in force, up from 60 per cent in 2015, driven mainly by term. Coverage is climbing partly because people are carrying bigger mortgages and a higher cost of living.

The years you're insuring may not all be healthy ones

Total lifespan is only half the picture. Statistics Canada's health adjusted life expectancy release of January 9, 2026 puts health adjusted life expectancy (HALE) at birth at 66.9 years in 2023, down 3.5 years from its 2010 to 2012 peak, erasing more than a decade of progress (Statistics Canada, Health-adjusted life expectancy in Canada). In 2023, women had a life expectancy of 84.0 years against HALE of 67.7 years. For men the figures were 79.6 and 66.4.

Put that next to the causes of death above and the case for pairing a term policy with critical illness or disability coverage gets a lot more concrete. In your fifties, the more likely disruption isn't death. It's a serious illness you survive, with income interrupted for a year or two.

What this doesn't tell you

The honest limits:

• Life tables are population averages from recent mortality rates. They're not a forecast for one person. Your own health, family history and job matter far more than any national figure.
• Life expectancy at birth isn't the age at which most people die. It's a summary number pulled in both directions by deaths at every age.
• The HALE decline partly reflects how Canadians rate their own health since the pandemic, which is self reported. Reasonable people read that trend differently.
• Household coverage averages describe insured households only. They're not a target for yours.
• None of these sources say what you'll pay, or which insurer or product suits you. Premiums depend on age, health, smoking status, amount and the specific contract wording.
• Simple rules like "insure to 65" fall apart quickly with a second marriage, a dependent adult child, a family business, or a rental property carrying a large unrealized capital gain. Those need a plan, not a rule.

The practical version

Add up what would still need paying if you weren't here, note the year each obligation ends, then pick a term length that clears the last one with a bit of margin. Read the renewal and conversion clauses. Revisit the whole thing when life moves: a baby, a job change, a new mortgage in New Westminster, a business you start. The end of the year is a good moment for that check, since it's when many of us look at RRSPs and budgets anyway.

If you'd like a second set of eyes on those numbers, I'm happy to go through them with you. I'm an independent broker based in Burnaby, I compare offers from several of Canada's insurers, and I work in English and Tagalog. Book a free, no pressure call and we'll map your obligations to a term length that fits, with nothing to buy at the end of it.

This article summarises published rules and research for general information, is current as of October 24, 2026, and is not personalized financial, tax or legal advice.

Sources

• Statistics Canada. "Deaths, 2024." The Daily, January 13, 2026. Link
• Statistics Canada. "Life Tables, Canada, Provinces and Territories, 1980 to 2024." Catalogue no. 84-537-X, released January 13, 2026. Link
• Statistics Canada. "Health-adjusted life expectancy in Canada: Recent trends at birth and age 65 years, 2019, 2020 and 2023." The Daily, January 9, 2026. Link
• Statistics Canada. "Births, 2024." The Daily, September 24, 2025. Link
• Statistics Canada. "Fertility and baby names, 2025." The Daily, September 23, 2026. Link
• Financial Consumer Agency of Canada. "Life insurance." Government of Canada, page modified October 16, 2025. Link
• Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. "Canadian Life & Health Insurance Facts, 2026 Edition," October 2026. Link (PDF)
• Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association. "Canadian Life & Health Insurance Facts, 2025 Edition," 2025. Link