‘Poverty takes years off your life’: Men in Blackpool now have lowest life expectancy in Britain

People in the most deprived parts of the country are now expected to die up to a decade sooner than people in wealthier areas.

Shocking new figures have exposed stark life expectancy divides across the UK. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), Blackpool now has the lowest male life expectancy in the country – the first time since records began in 2001 that Glasgow has not come bottom of the rankings.

A baby boy born in Blackpool between 2021 and 2023 is likely to live for 73.1 years. In affluent Hart, Hampshire, the life expectancy for baby boys is 83.4.

Glaswegian girls born during this period have the lowest life expectancy in the country, at 78.26 years. Meanwhile, girls born in Kensington and Chelsea are expected to live to 86.46.

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The rankings are evidence of a “clear geographical divide,” the ONS has warned. The 10 areas with the highest life expectancies for both women and men were in southern England. The vast majority of areas with the lowest life expectancy were in Scotland and northern England. And the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has warned that it shows the “devastating impacts of poverty on life expectancy”.

Joseph Elliott, Lead Analyst at JRF, described the figures as “shocking but not surprising.”

“Not being able to afford essential items like enough food or heating robs people of options and dignity but also impacts their health. This in turn puts pressure on public services in more deprived areas, which are staggering under the weight of hardship,” he added.

“If we want people’s health to improve, we need to hear how the government intends to immediately bring down hardship as a first step. But we also need to see the longer-term change that’s needed if everyone in our country is going to have the same chances of good health, regardless of where they live.”

A JRF spokesperson on social media added that “being born into poverty could take years off your life. This is not OK.”

In the vast majority of areas, life expectancy has fallen since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 70% of areas seeing an overall decline. “We are yet to see a recovery from the decrease in life expectancy we saw during the pandemic,” the ONS explained.

Yet in deprived areas, the downward trend has been ongoing for years. In Blackpool, for instance, life expectancy has dropped 18 months since 2014, when it was 74.7 for men. 

During this time, austerity has slashed local council funding for preventative health services. According to a report tabled to Blackpool council this year, the local authority has roughly £1,400 less per person to spend on its population than it did over a decade ago. Its public health grant has been cut by £10 per person since 2013.

Last week, academics from the University of Glasgow published a book linking regional disparities in life expectancy to government policy.

In Glasgow – until this year repeatedly the city with the lowest male life expectancy in the UK – spending pressures have wiped nearly half a billion pounds over the council’s budget over the last 10 years. 

In their book Social Murder? Austerity and life expectancy in the UK, Dr David Walsh and professor Gerry McCartney explore how such cuts impact health – and argue that the decline in life expectancy evidences a “dereliction of duty from those in power”.

“Life expectancy is about more than just health – it’s about the kind of society we live in,” Dr Walsh said. 

“And in the early 2010s, after decades of continual improvement, life expectancy in the UK stopped increasing, and for a great many it actually declined. This is something that simply should not be happening in a wealthy society.”

The previous Conservative government’s austerity spending cuts shaved nearly half a year off the average person’s life between 2010 and 2019, research out earlier this year revealed.

The Big Issue has previously reported on disparities in ‘healthy life expectancy’ – the number of years a person can expect to spend in “good health”. Across the UK, the healthy life expectancy gap between the healthiest and unhealthiest local authority is 23.5 years for women and 21.2 years for men.

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