Men still 3.7 years behind women in life expectancy

MEN are no longer catching up with women on life expectancy as public health campaigns reach saturation point, Office for National Statistics data suggests.

The gap has narrowed every year for the past decade, falling from 4.2 years in 2006-8 to 3.7 years in 2012-14.

However, the latest data shows that this trend came to a halt in 2014-16, with the gap holding at 3.7 years. Average life expectancy for women is now 82.9 years, and for men it is 79.2 years.

Dr George Leeson, director of the Institute for Ageing at Oxford University, said: “You get something, maybe a public health campaign around smoking, which has an impact upon cardiovascular disease... and then they reach saturation point.

“It really was dramatic, but for that particular cohort of people, you can only do it once. If you’re going to try to reduce the gap even more, you’ve got to think of something else, and maybe it’s physical exercise, maybe it’s diet,” he said. The latest figures show that 17.7 per cent of men and 14.1 per cent of women are smokers.

Both men’s and women’s life expectancy is still rising but has slowed in recent years. Life expectancy for those reaching 90 has also remained static with men expected to live for four years and women expected to live for 4.6 years.

One in five men and almost one in three women can now expect to live to 90 and centenarians are the fastest growing group, increasing by 92 per cent between 2002 and 2016.

There are now almost 15,000 people older than 100 in the UK and 571,270 people aged over 90.