Keeping her Majesty The Queen busy with birthday cards
Aideen Young blogs about how increases in life expectancy mean enormous changes, but not only for individuals who will have to plan for longer lives.
The latest Office of National Statistics (ONS) estimates on the numbers of “Very Old” people in the UK may yet require the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to recruit even more staff to its so-called “Centenarian team”.
Two years ago they were forced to expand from one to seven members of staff to cope with a major increase in the number of people who, according to long-held tradition, receive a congratulatory birthday card from Her Majesty the Queen on the occasion of their 100th birthday. It looks as if they’re going to have to keep on hiring.
The latest “Very Old” estimates are truly staggering: in 2015, there were over half a million people aged 90 and over; the number of people aged 100 and over has risen by 65% to 14,570 over the decade to 2015; and of these centenarians, 850 are estimated to be aged 105 or more, double the number ten years ago. For some time, the oldest-old group has been the most rapidly growing segment of the population in developed countries. This truly extraordinary achievement comes down to improvements in public health, advances in medicine and technology and changes in personal health habits from people exercising more to a drop in the number of those who smoke. And there is no still sign that we have reached maximum life span as year-on-year increases show no sign of slowing down. The 100-year life described in a recent eponymous book by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott may yet turn out to be a conservative estimate.
A longer life is a wonderful thing so long as it is accompanied by all those factors that we know contribute to a good later life. An Ipsos MORI study commissioned by the Centre for Ageing Better found that being in good health was the most important factor for the group of older people surveyed, followed by having enough money, being independent at home and having good relationships with family. Unfortunately, very few of us have the good fortune to pass away quietly in our sleep and so the end of life is invariably accompanied by ill health. So are we getting more years of life and more years of illness and disability, or is the period of illness and disability being squeezed into a shorter period of time at the end of life?
The evidence is mixed. The Global Burden of Disease study found that worldwide, years lived with disability are declining more slowly than mortality rates. But other studies suggest that healthy lifestyle factors are effective in reducing the period of time for which one is disabled in later life. Exercise is good for you.
As long ago as 1980, when the famous Black report was published, it became apparent that life expectancy is strongly associated with social status. In Glasgow, for example, which has extreme health inequality compared to other areas in the UK, men in more affluent neighbourhoods live on average 15 years longer than those in the poorest. And it’s not just that the poorest people in society die earlier; proportionally more of their lives is spent suffering from ill-health or disability. This means that if we do not act to tackle the social inequalities in our society, extreme old age could become the sole preserve of the most advantaged.
The phenomenal increases in life expectancy mean enormous changes, not only for individuals who will have to plan and save for longer lives, but also for employers who need to adopt a more flexible and inclusive approach to their older workers, and for society itself. In spite of the fact that there may be challenges ahead, these new estimates from the ONS are cause for celebration. And so we wish a very Happy Birthday to all who received their birthday cards from the Queen this week.
