Slowdown warning on health of nation

ENGLAND AND Wales has some of the worst life expectancy improvements across 23 “high-income” countries, a new study has revealed.

A team of researchers compared life expectancy and mortality rates in England and Wales from 1970 to 2016 with those of 22 other countries including Scotland, Ireland, France, Australia, the USA and Japan.

Their study said life expectancy at birth among men in England and Wales was 79.0 years and for women was 82.9 years in 2011, increasing by 0.4 years for men and 0.1 years for women by 2016.

Of the 22 other countries studied only two saw a smaller improvement for men during this period while just one had a lower figure for women.

Lead author Professor David Leon, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “We are concerned that the configuration of economic and social forces that have operated since the middle of the 20th century that have enabled the advances in life expectancy seen since the 1950s are not necessarily going to remain.

“Today the world is facing major challenges, from climate change to the disruption of longestablished aspects of international collaboration and co-operation, many of which may have a negative impact on future health progress.”

Norway had the highest increase in male life expectancy at 1.62 years between 2011 and 2016

while Luxembourg had the highest for women at 1.57 years.

The study, carried out by a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, was published in The Lancet Public Health. It is the first study to measure how far trends in England and Wales compared with a group of other high-income countries, the authors said.

The team said that a slowdown in the rate of increase of life expectancy since 2011 was seen in many of the other countries but the trends in England and Wales were “among the worst”.