Living in the poorest parts of England can cost you almost five years of your life
Men living in the poorest areas of the country can expect to live 4.4 fewer years on average than those living in the wealthiest areas of England, our new analysis reveals.
Our State of Ageing report 2025 highlights the substantial variations in the experiences of growing older across England with the difference in life expectancy for women in the richest and poorest areas now reaching an average of 3.7 years.
And when comparing individual local authority areas, the gap in the years lived by its residents grows even wider to a full decade for men and almost eight years for women.
The State of Ageing 2025 report, published today, also reveals that older people living in local authority areas with the highest proportion of residents on low incomes are almost three times as likely to be disabled than those living in the areas of the country with the lowest proportions.
The report warns that regional inequalities in health are stark and growing.
The country’s poorest fifth local authority areas are overwhelmingly in the north of England and are predominately urban.
The richest fifth are almost exclusively made up of local authorities from the Midlands, the East of England, London and the South East and are significantly more likely to be rural - the proportion of rural local authority areas in the richest fifth is seven times higher than in the poorest fifth.
To tackle this deadly postcode lottery, we are calling for the creation of an independent Commissioner for Older People and Ageing to deliver a targeted focus across government departments on reducing inequality in later life.
We are also calling for a reversal of cuts that have reduced the public health grant by a quarter over the past eight years.
Dr Carole Easton OBE, Chief Executive at the Centre for Ageing Better, said:
The substantial regional inequalities highlighted in our new State of Ageing report are truly a matter of life and death. Living in a part of the country where good quality jobs and opportunity is scarce, and where financial insecurity and poverty is rife, is robbing people of their health in later life and depriving them of years spent with loved ones. This is the true human cost of our very unequal society.
“The really worrying trend is that inequality in life expectancy is increasing almost everywhere. The bombardment of shocks from austerity, Covid and the cost-of-living crisis have compounded longer-term health and inequality issues to ensure we truly are the sick man of Europe.
“Coordinated, urgent action is needed across government, society, and communities to put us back on the road to recovery. A Commissioner for Older People and Ageing is urgently needed to lead those efforts. Everyone benefits when older people can live fulfilling, engaged, independent lives in age-friendly societies.”
Dr Jeanelle de Gruchy, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, said:
The unequal gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas across England should concern us all.
“The longer life spent in good health, and longer life expectancy, of those living in our least deprived areas demonstrates that we can – and should – have an ambition to prevent the earlier onset and increased multimorbidity, poor health and early death of people living in our more deprived communities.”
The new State of Ageing 2025 report reveals the average life expectancy at birth for men in the fifth of local authority areas with the lowest incomes in England is 77 years compared to 81.4 years for men living in the wealthiest fifth of local authorities.
For women, the average life expectancy at birth in the fifth of local authority areas with the lowest incomes is 81.2 years compared with 84.9 years in areas in the highest fifth.
Men living in the district of Hart in Hampshire (83.4 years) can expect to live a full decade longer than men in Blackpool (73.1 years) while women in Kensington and Chelsea (86.5 years) can expect to live almost eight years longer than women in Blackpool (78.9) for women.
The State of Ageing Report 2025 also shows that while the level of income deprivation is a good indicator of life expectancy, the relationship can be complicated and impacted by other factors, and therefore the response to tackle inequalities in life expectancy requires a localised and focused approach.
For example some places in the poorest fifth local authority areas such as Enfield have an average life expectancy that is higher than some places in the wealthiest fifth such as York and Melton.
Dr Aideen Young, Senior Evidence Manager at the Centre for Ageing Better and co-author of the State of Ageing 2025 report, said:
There are huge inequalities in our health across the country. The poorest health is seen in the poorest places and these places tend to be in the north and they tend to be urban areas. Inequality in life expectancy has increased in England as a whole and in almost all regions.
“How we as a country respond to this challenge is complex and nuanced. The places with the poorest health are not necessarily the oldest or most rapidly ageing places in the country. Most rural local authorities have older populations with better than average health while there are many places with younger than average age profiles where the older population is in worse than average health.
“Even within regions, life expectancy can vary significantly. In the North East, life expectancy can vary by up to three years between places that are barely over an hour’s drive away from each other while in the South East the regional variation can be as much as six years.
“Our health is so closely connected to the homes we live in, the jobs we do, the lifestyles we lead. We need to tackle the wider determinants of health across people’s lives, ensuring that everyone has the same opportunities to have a good job, financial security and a decent home, and to develop and maintain connections to family, friends and a supportive wider community.”
The State of Ageing 2025 report also reveals widely varying regional levels of long-standing illness or disability that limits activity among people aged 50 to 69 - ranging from a quarter (24%) in the South West to almost two in five (37%) in the North East.
This disparity is even greater at a local authority level.
People aged 50 to 64 living in Blackpool are almost three times as likely to be disabled (32%) as people living in Elmbridge in Surrey.
Knowsley in Merseyside, which has one of the highest income deprivation rates in the country, also has one of the highest disability rates (46%) for people aged 65+ in the country.
This is compared to one of the wealthiest local authority areas, Hart in Hampshire, which has a disability rate of 28% among its 65+ population.
