live expectancy

I can’t quite put my finger on the precise reason why, but it seems to me that we are in a process of exceptional decline, compared to the broad and linear improvements in living standards and decency over the more than half a century I have lived through. This story, bearing in mind that we have a higher proportion of older people in rural England than the national norm, suggests to me that over time rural places will become unsustainable for older people to live in. That is unless technology somehow enables us to overcome the challenges of living effectively in our own homes when we become frail. It tells us:

Children born today are likely to spend a larger proportion of their lives in poor health than their grandparents.

They will also benefit from substantially smaller increases in their life expectancy than those born just a few years earlier, in the first decade of the 21st century.

But new data from the Office for National Statistics has also shown that those aged 65 are seeing their healthy life expectancy increase: men in England and Wales aged 65 have gained 31.5 weeks of life, and 33.5 weeks of healthy life, since 2009. Women of the same age have gained 17.4 weeks of life and 23.3 weeks of healthy life over the same period.

In contrast, the proportion of life expected to be spent in good health in the UK has decreased between 2009-11 and 2016-18, from 79.9% to 79.5% for males and from 77.4% to 76.7% for females.