Stock up on candles – majority of us now live past 80

THE majority of men and women now live past 80, according to official figures released yesterday.

Decades of rising wealth, healthier lifestyles and improved medicine mean more than two-thirds of women and well over half of men live beyond their 80th birthday.

For women, the chances of seeing their ninth decade have risen by more than a third over the past 30 years, according to the analysis by the Office for National Statistics.

In the early 1980s, just 51.2 per cent of female deaths were over the age of 80. But between 2013 and 2015, that share rose to 68.8 per cent.

And among men, the increase in longevity is even more spectacular. The figures showed that in the early 1980s the majority of men were dying in their 60s and 70s – with fewer than a third making it to 80.

However in the most recent two-year period, the share of male deaths over 80 had nearly doubled to 57.4 per cent. The most frequent age of death during this period was 85 for men and 89 for women.

The ONS report said the reasons behind the unprecedented numbers of people living to great ages range from public health improvements to the effects of wartime rationing. It cited the decline in smoking, better diagnosis and treatment of disease, and the decline of dangerous and unhealthy jobs in heavy industry in favour of comfortable office jobs.

The report added that the lifetimes of the oldest people have been extended by the experience of the ‘golden cohort’ of babies born between 1926 and 1935, who were the first to benefit from such advances.

The number of people dying before they reach 70 has also fallen sharply. Just 9.1 per cent of men who died in 2013-2015 were under 60, and just 5.9 per cent of women.

Our increased longevity meant that in 2015 there were more than half a million over-90s and 14,750 people over the age of 100. Some 850 had passed their 105th birthday – double the numbers of only a decade previously.

For children born between 2013 and 15, average life expectancy ins now 79.1 years for boys and 82.8 for girls.