The number of years British people enjoy good health has fallen by over two years in a decade, with more suffering from ailments before hitting retirement age, a new study has shown.
“The UK’s health is deteriorating and slipping further behind comparable nations,” said the study’s co-author Andrew Mooney, principal data analyst with the Health Foundation.
Between 2012-2014 and 2022-2024, healthy life expectancy (HLE) in the UK dropped from 62.9 years for men and 63.7 years for women to just under 61 for both.
The healthy life expectancy measures the average number of years a person would expect to live in good health based on current mortality rates and the levels of self-reported good health, the Foundation said in its report released Sunday.
It said the figures were “a key measure of the population’s health” and provided “a more comprehensive picture of the UK’s health than life expectancy alone”.
The new findings were a “watershed moment” for the UK as the years of good health fell below the age of retirement, which is 66 and rising later in 2026 to 67, the study added.
“These findings reinforce growing evidence about declining health in the UK, particularly among the working-age population,” the study said.
“Of 21 high-income countries, the UK is one of only five that saw healthy life expectancy fall between 2011 and 2021, and had the second steepest decline.”
Mooney said “only the United States now has a lower healthy life expectancy than the UK”.
The report also warned of widening inequalities in healthy life expectancy between affluent and deprived areas.
The gap between the most and least deprived places in England “is now 19.4 years for males and 20.3 years for females”.
In wealthy Richmond, a suburb of west London, healthy life expectancy for men is 69.3 years and for women 70.3.
But in the poorer northwestern seaside resort of Blackpool, it drops to 50.9 years for men.
“Successive governments have failed to take the long-term action needed to address this, resulting in a growing economic and fiscal impact as well as a substantial human cost,” the report said.
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