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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| An investigation into inequalities in adult lifespan | | Author(s) | Les Mayhew, David Smith |
| Corporate Author | Faculty or Actuarial Science and Insurance, Cass Business School, City University London; International Longevity Centre UK - ILC-UK |
| Publisher | International Longevity Centre UK - ILC-UK, London, May 2016 |
| Pages | 32 pp |
| Source | ILC-UK, 11 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QB. Download at: http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/... |
| Keywords | Ill health ; Poverty ; Life span ; Life expectancy tables ; Death rate [statistics] ; Reports. |
| Annotation | People in the UK are living longer than ever, but the gap between the oldest and shortest lived appears to be increasing. The authors use data from the Human Mortality Database to measure the differences in age between the first 10% of adult deaths and the top 5% of survivors. They find that in the period from 1879 to 1939, this gap steadily closed. They argue that this reduction in inequalities in age at death was due to the benefits of clean drinking water, mass vaccination and other public health improvements which were available to everyone; but such improvements were disproportionately shared by the poor relative to the rich. Although life expectancy continued to rise after 1950, the inequality gap remained roughly constant, and in recent years has started to widen again - more so for men than for women. A key difference between pre-1939 and now is that deaths are increasingly from chronic rather than infectious diseases or environmental causes. Since chronic disease is often attributable to life choices such as smoking and diet, the blame for the widening must be laid increasingly at the door of individual unhealthy lifestyles rather than ambient risks and hazards. |
| Accession Number | CPA-160503001 E |
| Classmark | CH: W6: BG6: S7: S5: 6K |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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