Healthy life expectancy for women in the most deprived areas of England and Wales has fallen to the lowest level since recent records began, with those women now likely to spend only two-thirds of their lives in good health.
Women living in wealthier parts of England are likely to enjoy about two more decades of healthy life, the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data has shown.
Female babies born between 2020 and 2022 in the most deprived areas of England were likely to spend just 65.1% of their lives in good health, compared with 81.5% in the least deprived areas, the ONS found.
The estimate for the most deprived areas is the lowest since the series began in 2013-15, when it stood at 66.3%.
“We have higher rates of ill health than ever before in this country, and that’s disproportionately affecting women more than men,” said Emma Frew, a University of Birmingham health economics professor and a research professor at the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
“The impact of the cost of living crisis, the two-child cap on benefits – these disproportionately affect women more than men because it’s women that tend to have more responsibility in the household, more responsibility for childcare.
“They contribute more to unpaid care, there are higher rates of mental health problems and high rates of domestic violence, which tends to focus on girls and women.”
The inequality gap between men and women has grown, with men born in 2020-22 in the most deprived areas expected to spend 70.4% of their lives in good health, compared with 84.5% for those in the least deprived.
The gap between richer and poorer areas has also widened for both genders – for women, it has grown from 19.6 years in 2013-15 to 20.2 years in 2020-22, while for men it has grown from 18.7 to 19.1.
In Wales, female babies born in the most deprived areas in 2020-22 can expect to spend 61.5% of their lives in good health, the lowest since those estimates began in 2013-15. In the least deprived areas the figure stands at 80.7%.
“We’re seeing increasing levels of poverty because of things like the cost of living crisis, which has pushed more households into food insecurity states,” Frew said. “We think of ourselves as being quite a developed country, but there are parts of the country that have economic and health outcomes much more similar to developing countries.”
Compared with the pre-coronavirus pandemic period of 2017-19, life expectancy at birth in England in 2020 to 2022 has decreased in the most deprived areas by 1.4 years for men, to 72.6 years, and by 1.1 years for women, to 77.7 years.
“We’ve got people who still have a similar level of life expectancy, but not healthy life expectancy. I think that’s the key metric healthcare service and local authorities are really targeting, because it is not just getting people to live longer, but we need to get people to live healthier and longer,” Frew said.
“There needs to be a really concerted health and equality strategy that looks at those gender differences.”