Cost of Autism: Life Expectancy and Median Age at Death

Do severe and profound cases have shorter lifespans?

What’s the Life Expectancy of People with Autism?

Life expectancy in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has emerged as an urgent public health and policy topic. A growing number of studies now provide numerical estimates of lifespan across different autism subgroups—especially stratified by co-occurring conditions like intellectual disability (ID) or epilepsy. Below is a synthesis of the major findings from both peer-reviewed studies and government case data.

General Findings from National Datasets

United Kingdom (2023)
A matched cohort study using UK primary care records (1989–2019) found the following reductions in life expectancy at age 18 among people diagnosed with autism:

• Men with autism + ID: life expectancy reduced by 7.3 years

• Women with autism + ID: reduced by 14.6 years

• Without ID: smaller reductions (6.1–6.4 years)

Source: O’Nions et al., Lancet Regional Health – Europe (2023), PMID: 38188276

Median Age at Death (Reported Values, Not Life Expectancy)

Sweden (2016)
Nationwide registry data reported median age at death among individuals with autism, not life expectancy:

• With co-occurring intellectual disability: median age at death = 40 years

• Without ID: median = 63 years

• Controls (general population): median = 80 years

Source: Hirvikoski et al., British Journal of Psychiatry (2016), PMID: 26541693

ID-Only Cohorts (Independent Anchors)

Denmark (2024)
Nationwide cohort data for people with intellectual disability (not autism-specific):

• Period life expectancy at birth:

  • Men with ID: 59.8 years

  • Women with ID: 63.6 years

Source: Thygesen et al., Journal of Intellectual Disabilities (2024), PMID: 36723454

NVICP Case Table (Holland et al., 2011)

A 2011 article by Holland, Conte, Krakow, and Colin published in Pace Environmental Law Review examined 83 cases in which children with vaccine injury were later diagnosed with autism or autism-like symptoms. Although the NVICP case table was not intended as an epidemiological tool, it contains specific age-at-death entries.

Of the 11 entries where both “deceased” and an age were provided, one was clearly unrelated to medical condition (“deceased, 21 (lightning)”) and was excluded. From the remaining 10:

• The ages at death were: 4, 5, 12, 13, 14, 15, 21, 22, 23, and 31.

• The mean (average) age at death across these 10 cases is 18 years.

• The median age at death is 15 years.

Seven of the ten individuals who died had seizure disorders, consistent with broader literature showing that mortality risk in autism is heightened when epilepsy is present. This aligns with the Swedish study showing much lower median age at death—40 years—for autistic people with co-occurring intellectual disability compared to 63 years in those without, and 80 years in controls.

Why These Numbers Matter

These figures confirm a clear pattern: where autism is accompanied by early-onset encephalopathy, persistent seizures, and developmental regression, life expectancy may be severely compromised. The NVICP data echoes trends seen in large-scale national datasets from Sweden, the UK, and Denmark leading to the question: why?

The average reported age of death among NVICP-compensated autistic individuals for whom age data is available is 18 years; the median is 15. These are sobering numbers and they demand attention—not only from researchers and clinicians, but from policymakers tasked with protecting the most vulnerable. They also underscore the urgent need for updated, large-scale, and stratified life expectancy studies on autism in the United States and worldwide.