Centre for Public Policy

Blog by Dr David Walsh and Professor Gerry McCartney of the University of Glasgow

People think of life expectancy as a measure health. And, clearly, it is: it’s one measure of the current health of any population. But it’s also arguably much more than that. It’s arguably a barometer of the type of society we live in, reflecting the extent to which people are cared for, the extent to which they are allowed to flourish. Examined over time, therefore, it’s another type of indicator: it’s a measure of societal progress.

At the start of the last century, the life expectancy of people in Scotland was – on average – around 46 years. Fast forward just a hundred years or so and people were living – again, on average – an extra 30 years. That’s an astonishing change, and one that captures the many different ways that society progressed over that time: medical advances obviously, but also a population being better cared for, with vaccination programmes to protect them from disease, better housing to protect them from the cold, less dangerous jobs, and of course, the creation of the NHS and the wider welfare state, Beveridge’s ‘cradle to grave’ social (societal) prescription. Looking back over the past 100 years or so, we therefore see a long-term trend of continual societal improvement: increases in life expectancy decade after decade after decade, with the only real exceptions to this rule being periods of genuine crisis: world wars and pandemics.

Perhaps the only thing more astonishing than this unrelenting progress has been the fact that in the early part of the last decade – in the early 2010s – this all stopped. And for large sections of the UK population, it was much worse than that: life expectancy actually went into reverse. That means death rates went up: on average, people were not living longer, they were dying younger. Studies have quantified this additional loss of life as equating to hundreds of thousands of extra deaths – considerably more than the number of people who died from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Why?

In our new book – ‘Social Murder? Austerity and Life Expectancy in the UK’ – we lay out the evidence for what’s happened and how. We show that this catastrophe has principally been brought about by policies introduced first by the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government in 2010, and then continued since then under subsequent administrations. These governments’ programme of ‘austerity’ has fundamentally changed the society we live in. In cutting both the income of the poorest – through cuts to social security on a breathtaking scale – and the vital services (including social services) that people depend on, the policies have had a devastating effect on the lives of people who need help the most. We’ve seen this changed society in hugely increased rates of child poverty, in the ‘normalisation’ of foodbanks (something that hardly existed in the UK before 2010), in increased levels of homelessness – and, as a consequence of all these things and more, in appalling changes to that very measure of population health: life expectancy. In the same way that societal advances protected health and enhanced life expectancy over the course of the 20th Century, so societal regression has been brought about by government policies which have directly harmed, rather than helped, the poorest and most vulnerable populations.

In the book, we set out all the evidence for what has happened, and how these policies have had such devasting impacts on health and health inequalities in the UK. We also compare what happened in other countries, highlight the inadequate responses from those in positions of power and influence, and set out what policies and responses are really needed to reverse this shameful situation. The latter include reversing the cuts to social security to create a robust ‘safety net’ for those in need, investing in the public and social services that are needed for people to live healthily, and more broadly adopting evidence-based measures to narrow societal, and thereby also health, inequalities across all of the UK.

Despite the recent change of UK Government, austerity very much remains in place today: we therefore need our political leaders to understand this evidence – both of what has happened, and what now needs to be done.

All royalties from the book go to NHS charities, and not to the authors. So buy a copy and send it to your local MP.

Authors

Dr David Walsh, Senior Lecturer in Health Inequalities (Public Health), University of Glasgow

Professor Gerry McCartney, Professor of Wellbeing Economy (Urban Studies & Social Policy), University of Glasgow

Learn more about the book

‘Social Murder? Austerity and life expectancy in the UK’ is published by Policy Press, ISBN 978-1447373087. All royalties go to NHS charities. 

^{Header image for blog by Possessed Photography on Unsplash}

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First published: 29 November 2024