Women’s healthy life expectancy falling

Their advantage over men is now just six months

HOW long women can expect to live in good health has fallen for the first time since officials began tracking the figures.

An analysis reveals that baby girls can now expect to enjoy 63.7 years without sickness or disability – 1.7 months less than those born in 2010.

However boys have seen their estimated time in good health increase by 4.3 months over the same period, to 63.1 years.

The Office for National Statistics report appears to mark a watershed in the nation’s health, with the narrowing gender gap suggesting quality of life for half the population has stopped getting better.

Figures also show a major slowdown in improvements to overall life expectancy. The ONS said that increases – which have been continuous since the end of the Second World War – are now ‘stalling’, and that the brakes are on harder for women than men.

Healthy life expectancy was first estimated by the ONS for children born between 2009 and 2011.

The most recent figures mean that while girls born in 2010 could expect to have over a year longer in good health than a boy born at the same time, the advantage for girls born between 2014 and 2016 was down to six months.

It is the latest in a raft of evidence that lives are no longer lengthening as fast as they were – with implications not just for individuals but for Whitehall and business. For example, assumptions on which civil servants have been raising pension ages may not hold true in the future. Yesterday’s report did not speculate on why women’s time in good health seems to be lessening. However, the ONS said that overall life expectancy was slowing faster for women than men.

ONS researcher Chris White said: ‘Mortality improvements have slowed somewhat in the secthe

‘Improvements have slowed’

ond decade of the 21st century.

‘This is evidenced by the rate of improvement in life expectancy at birth falling by 75.3 per cent for males and 82.7 per cent for females, when comparing the second decade with the first decade.’

The latest ONS measure for overall lifespan is based on the ‘median’ – the point at which half babies born in any year will have died. For those born between 2014 and 2016 this means 85.8 years for girls and 82.3 for boys.

Officials avoided suggesting any causes for the slowdown yesterday. However, last week, in a commentary on how certain factors might affect life expectancy, the ONS suggested that medical science may not prove as successful in the future as it has in the past.

Men’s life expectancy is also acknowledged to have improved because of factors such as the decline of dangerous jobs in heavy industry. Meanwhile modern women are increasingly likely to work in similar conditions to men.

Modern figures on how long people can expect to live in good health have only been collected since 2009. Previous indicators produced by the ONS are not comparable – but none have shown a drop in women’s healthy lives.