Life expectancy is an estimate of how long someone might live; it can be calculated from any age e.g. LE at birth. We use LE at birth throughout this section. It is worth noting that someone who has already survived past childhood will have a longer LE than given at birth. For example, if someone had a life expectancy at birth of 88 years but has lived to 88, then their life expectancy is now 93 years. This is based on the age that people in the area die, and is calculated using death certification data; three years worth of data is used to help us to see trends.
Summary
Nationally, Life expectancy (LE) had been increasing, with a relatively steady gradient over the last 50 years. This gradient reduced over the last decade meaning that LE on average was increasing, but increasing slowly. Further analysis shows that LE was still increasing quickly for wealthier groups but was actually dropping for more deprived groups, for females in particular. This was reported on in the Plymouth DPH Annual Report 2019 'Building wellbeing and resilience in a time of austerity'
The Covid-19 pandemic caused a sudden reduction in LE; with a larger drop for men than for women. Again, this was larger in more deprived groups than in wealthier ones.
In Plymouth;
- Smaller numbers make the trends more difficult to prove but we believe we had seen similar patterns in LE general trends pre-pandemic.
- Our lower death rates due to Covid19 during the pandemic mean that for the pandemic year 2020, Plymouth’s LE was very similar to England average.
- LE in Plymouth for both males and females compares very well to statistically similar neighbours.
- The inequality gap by deprivation was lower in Plymouth for female than for England, and the same for males