Impact of Stalled Life Expectancy on Health and Economic Inactivity in the UK and the Case for Prevention

We use partial life expectancy to show the existence in the UK of an asymmetric relationship between life span and health span in five-year age brackets over the life course. Using comparable data from other advanced economies, we investigate why years of improvement in life expectancy after 2010 have come to a halt, and what would have happened if austerity and the COVID pandemic had not occurred. We find that the UK does worse than other countries except for the US. We show that deprivation is a major source of disparities between health and life span and is a key contributing factor. A one-year decrease in life expectancy leads to a 2.5-year reduction in health expectancy, resulting in a 21-year disparity between health and life span in the most deprived area. The resultant gap places a considerable burden on public finances and slows economic growth. Impacts include lower economic activity rates, higher healthcare costs, greater immigration, and upward financial pressures on the state pension. The unresolved policy issue is how to slow the current trend, given the rapidly ageing UK population.