Rising life expectancy stalls after health spending cuts

There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of government policy in any particular country, but arguably a key measure is the life expectancy of its citizens. Obviously quality of life is important as well as length of life but the first tends to determine the second.

In an article in today’s “Guardian” newspaper, the following statistics tell a compelling story:

“In 1919 men lived for an average of 52.5 years and women for 56.1 years. That rose to 64.1 years and 68.7 years respectively by 1946. Life expectancy then rose in an almost unbroken gradual upward curve to 77.1 years for men and 81.4 years for women in 2005 and again to 78.7 and 82.6 in 2010, the year David Cameron’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition took office.”

But:

“A century-long rise in life expectancy has stalled since 2010 when austerity brought about deep cuts in NHS and social care spending, according to research by a former government adviser on the links between poverty and ill-health. Life expectancy> at birth had been going up so fast that women were gaining an extra year of life every five years and men an additional 12 months every three-and-a-half years. But those trends have almost halved since ministers made a “political decision” in 2010 to reduce the amount of money it put into the public sector, said Sir Michael Marmot.”

More on the story here.


 




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