Should we be surprised that people live longer if they reside in a supportive and vibrant community with a plethora of facilities and organised activities, plus care services on tap, all set in 225 acres of beautiful Surrey woodlands?
At first sight, it’s scarcely arresting that analysis of the records of Whiteley Village, a pioneering retirement community celebrating 100 years since its first resident moved in, has found that people – or at least women – living there have consistently benefited from added years of life. If you visit the site near Walton-on-Thames, you sense that intuitively.
It further reduces any surprise to learn that residents are admitted to the community only if their health is good enough to justify an expectation that they will be able to live independently, with minimal support, for “several years”. They may be required to provide evidence of this from their GP and/or undergo a medical examination.
But the study, unique in its range and causing excitement in the usually unexcitable world of actuarial science, does offer a more profound insight: such is the positive effect of life at Whiteley, it concludes, residents from some of the poorest backgrounds may be able to enjoy life expectancy matching that of those from the most affluent – in other words, a “good” retirement lifestyle can make up the deficit of socioeconomic disadvantage.
The community was established during the first world war by William Whiteley, founder of London’s first department store. It is believed to have been the first retirement village in the UK and has always restricted residence to people of “limited financial means”.
Today, Whiteley Village comprises 262 almshouses or cottages, 51 extra-care flats and a care home offering residential and nursing support. All told, 500 people live there, 75% of them women and the great majority in receipt of benefits to meet the cost. A one-bedroom cottage costs £941 a month; a place in the care home comes in at between £900 and £1,200 a week.
The study, by Cass Business School, analyses the records of 2,500 residents over the past 100 years and finds that women – who typically move to Whiteley between 65 and 69 years of age – have in recent decades enjoyed between 1.3 and 4.9 extra years of life compared with the average for England and Wales, although this premium has been falling as general life expectancy has risen.
Whiteley residents are drawn from the poorest 20% or quintile of the population. Yet the life expectancy of the women matches that of the wealthiest 40%. At age 67, those who arrived in 1980 could expect a further 17.9 years of life, only slightly less than the 18.1 years of women in the top 20% of the population as a whole by income and markedly better than the 15.2 years of those in the bottom 20%.
For men, who typically move in between the ages of 68 and 72, the effect is far less pronounced – the Cass researchers say only there is “some evidence” of a life expectancy premium – but they may none the less be matching the average male longevity in the wider population even though they come from the poorest 20%, after allowing for other factors.
Les Mayhew, professor of statistics at Cass and a co-author of the research report, says: “The undoubted lesson of Whiteley is that it is possible to create a socially stimulating and safe environment in which older people can enjoy a longer retirement in peace and comfort compared to that experienced by individuals of similar backgrounds in the general population.”
Speaking at the report’s launch, Tamara Finkelstein, director general for community care at the Department of Health, said the research was timely. The great challenge for policymakers was to try to capture the essence of what Whiteley offered and cultivate it elsewhere – not necessarily in retirement villages.
“The likelihood of replicating Whiteley for everybody is very small,” Finkelstein said. “But is there something about the reciprocity, which is such a big part of life there?”
Anna Dixon, chief executive of the Centre for Ageing Better, said most poorer older people would never be able to access a community like Whiteley. “How can we transfer the learning into other settings, perhaps even social housing, to enable more people in that lowest quintile to have that boost to their quality of life?”
The findings, Dixon said, echoed those of research by the centre that suggested that older people, particularly women, benefited from increased wellbeing if they were well connected socially and had a “can-do” attitude.
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• This article was amended on 28 February 2017. An earlier version said the Cass study had analysed the records of 25,000 residents over the past 100 years. It involved 2,500 records.
