People will live longer than the current official estimates predict and regional inequalities will continue to rise steadily, researchers claim today.
The research, which forecasts how life expectancy will change in England and Wales, says official underestimates mean there could be a lack of resources to meet the need for additional investments in health and social services and pensions for the elderly.
The Imperial College London study, which is published in the Lancet, also predicts that regional inequality in life expectancy will increase.
The conclusions come after the research team developed statistical models using death records, including data on age, sex, and postcode, from 1981 to 2012 to forecast life expectancy at birth for 375 districts in England and Wales.
Using the models, they predict that life expectancy nationally will increase for men from 79.5 years in 2012 to 85.7 in 2030, and for women from 83.3 in 2012 to 87.6 in 2030.
These 2030 forecasts are 2.4 years higher for men and 1.0 year higher for women compared to the figures released by the Office of National Statistics.
People in the longest-living areas in 2012 – southern England and well-off parts of London – are expected to live seven or eight years longer than those in parts of urban northern England, such as Blackpool, Liverpool and Manchester, and South Wales. By 2030, the gap is projected to grow to more than eight years.
Professor Majid Ezzati, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, who led the study, said: “The bigger gains in life expectancy we predict will mean pensions will have larger pay-outs, and health and social services will have to serve an older population than currently planned.
“We also forecast rising inequalities, with bigger increases in lifespan for people in affluent areas than those in disadvantaged areas. This means wealthy people will benefit more from health and social services than poor people, and therefore should be prepared to pay its costs through higher taxes.
“Social and economic determinants have a huge impact on population health, so we should also be concerned about how social policies that affect the disadvantaged might also contribute to rising health inequality.”
Bennett JE et al. The future of life expectancy and life expectancy inequalities in England and Wales: Bayesian spatial forecasting of population health. Lancet 30 April 2015; doi: 10.1016/ S0140-6736(15)60296-3 [abstract]
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