Average worker will be in poor health for ALL their retirement

UNHEALTHY lifestyles mean people in England can expect to spend their entire retirement in poor health, a report says.

Back pain, bad joints, diabetes and dementia mean today’s generation of children will spend more than a fifth of their lives in bad health.

Health bosses said obesity, lack of exercise and smoking are driving the problem – and warned that people need to take more responsibility for their health.

Overall life expectancy is growing, with women now expected to live until 83 and men until 79.

But people are now expected to spend the better part of two decades at the end of their life suffering from health conditions.

Public Health England, which produced the report, says boys born between 2013 and 2015 have an average ‘ healthy life expectancy’ of just 63.4 and will then spend another 16.1 years in poor health.

And girls on average will be healthy until 64.1 and will then be ill for another 19.1 years. The problem is getting worse, with boys born between 2000 and 2002 expected to spend only 15.4 years of their life ill, and girls 18.1 years.

Professor John Newton, director of health improvement at Public Health England, said the average person is hit with health problems just before they retire, adding: ‘A significant proportion of our population cannot expect to live to their pension age in good health.’ The state pension age is currently 65 for men and 63 and nine months for women, but will increase in stages to 66 for both men and women by 2020.

Professor Newton stopped short of calling for a reversal of the increase in the retirement age, but said the findings ‘had implications for policy’. The report found that only 57 per cent of English adults carry out the recommended 150 minutes of weekly exercise, such as brisk walking or cycling, and 29 per cent do less than half an hour.

And it said that two in every three adults in England are now overweight or obese – a figure that is expected to rise.

Professor Newton said: ‘People aged over 80 have twice the ill health of people aged 60 to 64, who in turn have twice the ill health of people aged 20 to 24. Low back pain and neck pain are the predominant cause of ill health, they are very common.’

These problems are driven by lifetimes of being overweight and sedentary, he added.

Duncan Selbie, chief executive of Public Health England, said people need to take responsibility for their own health.

‘The NHS is hugely important to be there to keep people well,’ he said. ‘But what happens outside the NHS matters even more, to stop people becoming ill in the first place.’

But Mr Selbie said some people – particularly the poor – have fewer chances to stay healthy. The report said healthy life expectancy drops to the early-50s for the most deprived people in England.

He said: ‘Having a decent income is probably the most important factor for health.’