The Guardian, April 7, 2015
Life expectancy falls for older UK women

Campaigners point finger at austerity as Public Health England report  
shows first decline across all age groups in nearly two decades

Damien Gayle

Cuts to social care may have contributed to a shock fall in life  
expectancy for older women, campaigners have said.

Life expectancies for women aged 65, 75, 85 and 95 all fell in 2012  
compared with a year earlier, the first slip in all age groups in  
nearly two decades.

There was also a small drop in life expectancy for men at ages 85 and  
95, while longevity for men in the two younger age groups stagnated,  
according to a report published on Tuesday by Public Health England  
(PHE).

Although the figures for 2013 did not show any further falls, the life  
expectancies for men and women aged 85 and 95 failed to recover to  
2011 levels, which were the highest to date.

Age campaigners warned the unexpected decrease in life expectancies  
was a “canary in the coal mine”, showing how five years of austerity  
was beginning to take its toll on elderly people.

But PHE said it was too early to conclude there was a significant  
change in the three-decade-old upward trend in life expectancy. Its  
report suggested the falls could be due to flu or bad weather, or even  
a statistical blip, although it noted that they were reflected  
elsewhere in Europe.

The life expectancy of an average 75-year-old woman in 2013 was 13  
years and five weeks, five weeks fewer than people of that age in  
2011, according to PHE’s data. Women of 85 could expect to live a  
further six years and 42 weeks, two and a half months fewer than their  
counterparts of that age two years ago.

The falls come after five years of cuts to social care services,  
prompting some campaigners to warn that the government’s austerity  
programme could be leaving older people without enough support.

Caroline Abrahams, charity director for Age UK, said: “This decrease  
in life expectancy, after many years of improvement, is like the  
canary in the coal mine: it is telling us that something has changed  
for the worse, so that fewer people are thriving in later life than  
they could or should.

“The most obvious likely culprit is the rapid decline of state-funded  
social care in recent years, which is leaving hundreds of thousands of  
older people to struggle on alone at home without any help.”

The falls in life expectancy come after three decades in which life  
expectancy has on average increased by 1.2% for men aged 65 and 0.7%  
for women. It is the first time since 1995 that life expectancy has  
fallen among women of all four age groups studied, and the fifth time  
overall. Each time life expectancies have recovered and continued to  
improve.

“Fluctuations in life expectancy at older ages have occurred in the  
last 30 years and despite this the trend analysis shows that the  
overall trend has been upwards,” PHE’s report said.

Prof John Newton, chief knowledge officer at PHE, said: “There has  
been significant interest already in these data. However, the analysis  
presented in this report suggests it is too early to conclude that  
there has been a significant change in the overall upward trend in  
life expectancy at older ages.”

But Prof John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health,  
warned against government statisticians dragging their feet over  
drawing conclusions from the data.

He said: “This line that Public Health England are taking is slightly  
concerning because we have now had this data, this is the second year,  
and I’m wondering how many years of data do they need?

“This data is concerning because what we have had historically is a  
golden generation born after the first world war that have done very  
well with their health. Beginning in the 1970s we have had increasing  
numbers of people belonging to that cohort who were living  
increasingly long.

“But we have this massive increase in unemployment in the 1980s, which  
created a large number of long-term unemployed and we really need to  
know what’s happening to these people.”

Ashton said many of those long-term unemployed had in the past few  
years been faced with back-to-work assessments, with many reintroduced  
to the workforce in cases where this may have been inappropriate.

Echoing the comments made by Age UK, Ashton continued: “We know there  
have been these big cuts to social services and social support over  
the past few years and we need to know if this is having an effect.”

Now, with the strong possibility of a hung parliament and government  
paralysis after the looming election, Ashton said he was concerned the  
issue of falling life expectancy could be ignored.

“If this is a real phenomenon, we are not going to have any action on  
it for over a year,” he said. “We need to have a conversation about  
what we are going to do about this.”

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