How bad are life expectancy trends across the UK, and what would it take to get back to previous trends?

Abstract

BackgroundWithin the UK, there has been debate on whether life expectancy is increasing or decreasing in particular single or 3-year periods, but there has been less thinking whether overall trends have changed. This paper considers the extent to which the trends in life expectancy for the UK and its nations have changed before and after 2011.MethodsWe used the Office for National Statistics period life expectancy data for the UK and its nations. We used Lee’s approach to project life expectancy based on repeated sampling of year-to-year change in the baseline periods (1990–2011 and 1980–2011) and applied that to 2012 onwards.FindingsImprovements in period life expectancy were substantially and consistently lower between 2012 and 2018 than predicted from the trends from 1980 and, especially, from 1990. By 2018, life expectancy was lower than projected for females and males, respectively, by 1.22 and 1.52 years (England), 1.44 and 0.95 years (Northern Ireland), 1.30 and 1.44 years (Scotland), 1.53 and 1.63 years (Wales) and 1.24 and 1.49 years (UK overall), based on the 1990–2011 baseline period. Using a longer baseline period, which includes the slower rates of improvement during the 1980s, slightly reduces the gap between the current life expectancies and the projected medians.InterpretationFuture academic and policy focus should be on the deviation of the life expectancy trends from the baseline projection rather than on year-to-year variation. Concerted policy focus to return life expectancy to the projected trends is now urgently required.