After a decade-long slow improvement, the life expectancy of Britons has returned to the level it was in 2010. This is due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Office for National Statistics announced on Thursday that the UK birth expectancy between 2020 and 2022 is 78.6 for men, and 82.6 for women. This represents a decrease of 38 weeks for men and 23 weeks for women from 2017-19.
The agency reported that the life expectancy of women was back to the level it had been in 2010-2012, and for men slightly lower than the level reached in 2010-2012. This is the first time since 1980, when the data series started, there has been a drop in non-overlapping periods.
Pamela Cobb is a demography expert at the ONS. She said, “After a decade in which life expectancy improvement was slow, both men and woman’s life expectancy has now fallen.” The coronavirus epidemic, which caused increased mortality in 2021 and 2020, is primarily responsible for this decrease.
The UK is not alone in registering a decline in life expectancy, which indicates the age a person born in a given year would expect to live to if the average age of death did not change over their lifetime.
The UN Population Prospects report shows that the life expectancy of men and women worldwide has fallen from 72.8 to 71. years between 2019 and 2021. This is the first decline since 1959. In that year, China began its “great famine”, estimated to have caused the deaths of up to 40 million people.
According to the same set of data, all G7 advanced economies except Japan have reported a decline in life expectancy from 2019 to 2021. The data showed that the UK’s life expectancy was lower than those of France, Italy and Canada in 2021, reflecting Britain’s long-term drop in global rankings.
The ONS stated that a fall in life expectancy does not necessarily mean a baby who is born between 2020-2022 will have a shorter lifespan. This is because the average life span of a person born today depends on the changes in mortality over their lifetime.
Cobb said that if mortality rates increase, life expectancy will rise again.
Winter flu is a major cause of the increase in mortality that has been reported by ONS.
Separate data released on Tuesday showed that the number of 100-year-olds in England and Wales reached a new record in 2022.
In 2022 there will be more than twice as many centenarians. Some 82 per cent were women.
The ONS reported a similar increase in the number people aged 90 and over. While improvements in life expectancy had been low for many years, the ONS stated that reduced mortality over several decades, as well as peak birth rates between 1920-21, had led to more people living into their old age.
The data shows that healthcare and public health measures have improved, but the UK fiscal monitor has expressed concern about the impact on public finances of an aging population.
In its latest assessment of fiscal risks and sustainability the Office for Budget Responsibility warned of a doubled state pension spending as a percentage of GDP in 50 years, while tax revenues would be a smaller share of the total population.