National trends pre-Covid-19
In my Annual Report 2019, I highlighted that there had been a slow-down in the increasing trend of life expectancy. This was highlighted by the Office of National Statistics
- Life expectancy at birth in the UK did not improve in 2015 to 2017 and remained at 79.2 years for males and 82.9 years for females. ONS, September 2018
- In England, the growth in the female inequality came from a statistically significant reduction in LE at birth of almost 100 days among females living in the most deprived areas between 2012 to 2014 and 2015 to 2017, together with an increase of 84 days in the least deprived areas. ONS, March 2019
The slowdown had been seen across the UK, at similar rates but with some slight differences in details of trends. The UK was not alone in seeing this slowdown of improvements; many other developed countries saw this too. However, the UK was second only to the US in terms of severity of the slowdown.
This was especially important as there was a very clear change with deprivation, as LE had continued to grow for the less deprived groups (male and female) but had reduced for women in the more deprived groups.
Since then, further data has been released still covering the pre-Covid-19 times, which uses data from 2017-2019. That showed a slight improvement in LE; positive news, although still well below the trajectory which might have been expected had the slow down not occurred.
National trends through Covid-19
Clearly, an event as significant as a global pandemic such as Covid-19 might be expected to change life expectancy. This can clearly be seen, for example the Kings Fund report that:
By 2019, life expectancy at birth in England had increased to 79.9 years for males and 83.6 years for females. However, the Covid-19 pandemic caused life expectancy in 2020 to fall to 78.6 years for males and to 82.6 years for females, the level of a decade ago.
As can be seen on the graph, the data for 2021 is a little better, but still a very significant drop from pre-pandemic levels. Data for 2022 is not yet available.
