More spending cuts will keep putting people into early graves
SURPRISE, surpr ise – Glasgow again has the lowest life expectancy in the UK. The latest report into how long you can expect to live depending on where you were born showed all seven of the city’s Westminster constituencies as the place where you are more likely to die prematurely compared to the rest of the country.
The list depressingly, but not surprisingly, corresponds to deprivation.
The more deprived the area the shorter you can expect your life to be.
T he same areas are those that suffer from ill health earlier in life, unemployment, poverty and any social problem you care to mention.
Glasgow has consistently been at the wrong end of this spectrum for decades.
Whether we’ve had a Tory or Labour government in power at Westminster, Glaswegians, especially in the more deprived communities, will die earlier.
When it was a Labour/ LibDem coalition at Holyrood and since the SNP have been in charge, poverty levels have remained the same and more people are dying younger than others.
There is a range of factors involved in life expectancy.
Health Equals, the group that carried out the analysis, said health and well- being are shaped by housing quality, employment opportunities, air quality and social connections.
But these factors exist elsewhere, yet Glasgow is still worse.
The latest analysis of the life expectancy figures shows someone born in Glasgow can expect to live until the age of 76.
In Kensington, in London, it is 14 years more, where people can expect to live until they are 90.
Within the city and within the seven constituencies there are communities that are among the least deprived and those among the most deprived.
The researchers took an average of the 10 highest postcodes and the 10 lowest to get an overall average.
So, the 76 figure is in the middle, meaning it is far lower in some communities.
Both poverty and wealth and deprivation and opportunity exist side by side in and around Glasgow.
The wealthier suburbs of East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire have vastly different outcomes from Glasgow.
The schools in Newton Mearns and Bearsden regularly feature in the lists of high exam results while their counterparts just a mile or so inside the city boundary are closer to the other end.
Equally the life expectancy in these areas is always considerably higher than Glasgow, overall.
In the most deprived communities, the life expectancy is lower and the healthy life expectancy, the age to which someone can expect to live before they suffer from longterm or serious health conditions, is decades younger at around the early to mid- 50s.
Health conditions then force people out of employment early, if they are in work, and can lead to poverty, exacerbating their health conditions and round and round we go.
No government has been able to crack the conundrum of intergenerational poverty in Glasgow.
Much has been done to improve housing with better quality new- build social housing all over the city.
Yet so many remain
living in housing that is not properly fit for habitation with mould and damp, as often highlighted by this newspaper.
The environment around people is another important factor.
So many areas in Glasgow are blighted by derelict land and empty buildings that can be a depressing sight.
It brings people down and is a daily reminder, evidence, that they have been neglected by decisionmakers.
For as long as life expectancy figures have been produced, campaigners and medical practitioners have been telling governments that it is poverty related.
The Deep End group of GPs, working in the most deprived communities, has been calling for greater intervention in the poorest areas.
Lower educational attainment is linked to income deprivation, as such it is labelled the poverty- related attainment gap.
More young people in Glasgow are getting better results than in the past but the gap remains. When all these factors have been known, and have been undeniable, for so long, it is reasonable to ask why progress has been non- existent.
All of the above factors are affected by public spending.
Continued cuts to public spending, which Glasgow has suffered from more than most in the last decade, will only make the matters worse.
Cuts to social care, community organisations and everything the council delivers will only make it harder to see improvement in life expectancy and crucially healthy life expectancy.
And, in doing so, will lead to further health problems and put more pressure on health spending.
So, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that depriving communities of funding leads to deprivation, which leads to poor health and an early death.
In every community across Glasgow there are people fighting back, organising their own support for each other.
Without funding, places to meet and support with transport and energy, they are put in an impossible position and many are struggling to keep going.
Behind these life expectancy figures are communities, families and people that deserve so much better than the deal they have been getting.
No government has been able to crack the conundrum of intergenerational poverty in Glasgow