Chaotic dynamics with sensitive dependence on initial conditions may result in exponential decay of correlation functions. We show that for one-dimensional interval maps the corresponding quantities, that is, Lyapunov exponents and exponential decay rates, are related. More specifically, for piecewise linear expanding Markov maps observed via piecewise analytic functions, we show that the decay rate is bounded above by twice the Lyapunov exponent, that is, we establish lower bounds for the subleading eigenvalue of the corresponding Perron–Frobenius operator. In addition, we comment on similar relations for general piecewise smooth expanding maps.