The paper investigates the interaction between the notions of expansiveness and admissibility. We consider a polynomially bounded discrete evolution family and define an admissibility notion via the solvability of an associated difference equation. Using the admissibility of weighted Lebesgue spaces of sequences, we give a characterization of discrete evolution families which are polynomially expansive and also those which are expansive in the ordinary sense. Thereafter, we apply the main results in order to infer continuous-time characterizations for the notions of expansiveness through the solvability of an associated integral equation.