Healthy life expectancy for men and women across the UK has fallen to its lowest level on record, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Furthermore those born in the healthiest areas were expected to have 15 years longer healthy life than those in the worst performing areas.
The data shows that despite modest increases in total life expectancy from 2019 to 2021, healthy life expectancy at birth in the UK, for both males and females, decreased to their lowest level since the ONS’s time series began in 2011 to 2013.
The data covering the period 2022 to 2024 shows that males in the UK could expect to spend 60.7 years (77% of life) in “good” general health, compared with 60.9 years (73%) for females.
These were decreases of 1.8 and 2.5 years respectively, compared with the last non-overlapping period (2019 to 2021).
The healthy life expectancy gap at birth between local areas of the UK, measured as the difference between the 97.5th and 2.5th percentiles, was 14.7 years for men and 15.8 years for women.
This continued a trend of increasing spatial inequality since the start of the Covid pandemic.
England maintained the highest healthy life expectancy at birth among UK constituent countries for both males (60.9 years) and females (61.3 years); Scotland had the lowest for men (59.1 years) and Wales had the lowest for women (58.5 years).
The South East of England remained the region with the highest healthy life expectancy at birth (63.0 and 64.3 years, respectively), and the North East remained the region with lowest (57.0 and 56.9 years, respectively).
The North East has had the lowest healthy life expectancy at birth in every period since the ONS’s time series began.
Healthy life expectancy decreased in most of the UK’s local areas compared with 2019 to 2021 – in 83% of areas for males and 88% for females.
It decreased in a majority of areas within every constituent country and every region of England.
