(Bloomberg) -- Britain’s health problems began during the austerity era and left its economy more vulnerable to the Covid pandemic, a study found.
Life expectancy improvements for British 50-year-olds ground to a halt after 2010, coinciding with a period of funding cuts to social and health services, according to a paper from Bayes Business School in London. In contrast, a dozen of the 17 major economies analyzed — including countries such as Norway and Australia — saw life expectancy increase in the decade to 2020.
“The UK was hit particularly hard during this period and the precursor conditions were the period of austerity and the difficulties since the financial crisis,” said Les Mayhew, a professor of statistics and the report’s author, in an interview. “Funding in health care services did not expand as fast as previously due to austerity, there was a lack of preparedness in the Department of Health for issues like a pandemic on this scale.”
Other countries in which life expectancy stagnated or fell for 50-year-olds include the US, Spain, Italy and Switzerland.
The report also analyzed UK life expectancy in a range of age groups from 50 upwards. By 2018, British over 50s could expect to live one year less than if pre-2010 trends had continued in the UK, the report found. By the time the Covid pandemic struck in 2020, life expectancy dropped 2.3 years below the trendline.
Quality of Life
Lower life expectancy also causes people to spend less of their lives in good health, the report said, with a one-year fall in lifespan reducing so-called “health expectancy” by nearly 2.4 years.
Around 800,000 workers dropped out of the UK’s jobs market during the pandemic, mostly due to long-term sickness, and many haven’t returned. That’s exacerbating the burden on the National Health Service and making it harder for the Labour government to meet its pledge to revive growth.
“This increase in economic inactivity is impacting UK output and productivity,” Mayhew said. “The government seems to concentrate on dealing with the crises rather than the underlying problems.”
In more than 70% of local authorities, the average number of years spent in good health was below 65, the state pension age during the 2010s. The situation was worse in the most deprived areas. For example, in Blackpool, where economic inactivity rates are well-above the national average, people only have about 53.5 years of good health, compared with more than 70 in Richmond-upon-Thames in London.
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