Coming as a surprise to policy makers, life expectancy for women in the U.K. saw a drop to a level not seen before. This, experts argue, because the lifestyles of women – especially eating and drinking habits – become more closely aligned to men.
Data collated by the U.K. government shows that in 2012 there was a drop with the average life expectancy of women aged in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. The last time there was a drop was in 1995, and here the decrease was far smaller.
The issue not only affects the U.K., for as the report states: “It is striking that the fall in life expectancy at older ages in 2012 was also seen in many other European countries.”
As an example, the data shows that a woman aged 75 could expect to live 13.1 years. This is five weeks less than a woman of the same age would have expected to live had the measure been taken in 2011. As a second example, a woman aged 85 now has an average life expectancy of 6.8 years. This is a more drastic fall of 10 weeks based on an equivalent measure in 2012.
Policy makers suggest that this fall in life expectancy is related to lifestyle alterations for the so-termed “baby boomer” generation. This is because women within this demographic are far more likely to drink regularly and smoke (or they were former smokers) compared with the generation that came before. The smoking factor is also linked with lung cancer becoming a bigger killer of women who smoke than breast cancer.
Additional factors include less spending by the government on welfare and a drop in standards with care homes. The U.K. Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has made a number of cuts to social services during its five year term.
As a comparator, the life expectancy for men has remained unchanged for people of an equivalent age. Moreover, the past twenty years did see a rise in life expectancy for men by 1.2 percent and 0.7 percent for women. The stalling of the rate for men and the decline in the rate for women represent sudden reversals.
Commenting on the data collected by U.K. Official Statistics, Professor John Ashton, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health told The Daily Telegraph: “One of the issues we have seen is women living lifestyle’s becoming more like those of men over recent decades, with more smoking and drinking.”
