People in the UK are living longer, but they’re living longer in poorer health. As highlighted by the Health Foundation, healthy life expectancy – the number of years a person spends in “good health” – in the UK is declining, while other countries have managed to increase theirs.
The Health Foundation has called for ministers to place health on the same level of importance as economic growth and take up a new approach that looks beyond the NHS.
The findings of the think tank’s analysis, although concerning, are not surprising. The usual drivers of poor health, such as deprivation, increased exposure to smoking, poor diet, physical inactivity, and poor housing, are well-trodden issues.
The 2010 Marmot Review, led by Professor Michael Marmot and considered a “watershed” moment at the time, laid bare the direct relationship between social inequalities, health, and life expectancy.
Tens years after the Marmot review, a 2020 report by the Health Foundation warned that healthy life expectancy had declined for women since 2010, and the percentage of life spent in ill health has increased for men and women.
The new analysis by the think tank has now warned that healthy life expectancy has declined for both men and women. However, it has declined more for females than for males. Healthy life expectancy for males in the UK fell from 62.9 to 60.7 years between 2012–14 and 2022–24, and from 63.7 to 60.9 years for females. This decline reflects a reduction in the proportion of life spent in good health, from 79 per cent to 77 per cent for males and from 77 per cent to 73 per cent.
The findings suggest clear inequalities in healthy life expectancy between men and women, just weeks after the government published its women’s health plan. That plan promised to improve women’s health and life expectancy. However, experts at another think tank, the Nuffield Trust, were sceptical that the measures set out in Labour’s plan for women would actually achieve this.
The Nuffield Trust pointed out that hitting this ambition would require the government to improve healthy life expectancy for women in the most deprived areas of the country by 12.8 years – a huge amount. The think tank said that while some of the strategies would help, such as supporting women and girls to be more active, the government had not provided evidence that these measures would “turn around” the decline.
“While some of the individual actions can reduce ill health and improve the health service experience for women, it seems unlikely the ambition to improve healthy life expectancy can be achieved,” the Nuffield Trust analysis said.
Will the UK government ever be able to turn the ship around on “healthy life expectancy” if its cornerstone plan for women, who represent over half the population, has no chance of changing the tide?
