Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Life expectancy in Britain has fallen back to its level in 2010 following a drop during the Covid-19 pandemic and a decade of slow growth.
The Office for National Statistics said on Thursday that UK life expectancy at birth between 2020 and 2022 was 78.6 years for men and 82.6 years for women, down by 38 weeks and 23 weeks respectively from 2017-19.
As a result, the agency said life expectancy for women had returned to its level in 2010-2012 and was slightly below its 2010-2012 level for men, in the first drop across non-overlapping periods since the data series began in 1980.
Pamela Cobb, a demography analyst at the ONS, said: “After a decade of slowing life expectancy improvements, we’ve now seen life expectancy fall for both men and women. This decrease has been mainly driven by the coronavirus pandemic, which led to increased mortality in 2020 and 2021.”
The UK is not alone in registering a decline in life expectancy, which indicates the age a person born in a given year would expect to live to if the average age of death did not change over their lifetime.
According to data from the UN’s Population Prospects report, world life expectancy for men and women fell from 72.8 years in 2019 to 71 years in 2021, the first drop since 1959. That year marked the start of China’s “great famine”, which was estimated to have killed as many as 40mn people.
All the G7 advanced economies bar Japan reported a drop in life expectancy between 2019 and 2021, according to the same data set. However, it showed UK life expectancy in 2021 was below that of Italy, France and Canada, reflecting a long-term decline in Britain’s global ranking.
The ONS noted that the fall in life expectancy did not mean a baby born between 2020 and 2022 would go on to have a shorter life, because the average lifespan of someone born today would be determined by changes in mortality across their lifetime.
“If mortality rates improve, then life expectancy will go back up,” said Cobb.
The ONS said the improvement in UK life expectancy between 2011 and 2019 had been worse than before in part because of excess mortality due to winter flu.
In separate data published on Tuesday, the agency said the number of people aged 100 or over in England and Wales hit a record high in 2022.
There were 15,120 centenarians in 2022, more than double the figure in 2002. Some 82 per cent were women.
Reporting a similar rise in the number of people aged 90 or over, the ONS said that while improvements in life expectancy for nonagenarians had been low for several years, reduced mortality over many decades and peak birth rates in 1920-21 had resulted in more people living to the oldest ages.
The data reflects advances in healthcare and public health measures, but the UK fiscal watchdog has also expressed concerns over the impact of an ageing population on the public finances.
In its latest fiscal risks and sustainability assessment, the Office for Budget Responsibility warned that spending on the state pension would double as a proportion of gross domestic product in 50 years while a smaller proportion of the population would contribute to tax revenues.
“All of these trends could increase fiscal pressures on future governments,” it said.
