Britain has endured a decade of early deaths, and the pandemic is not the only reason. There are three things in particular that can help to improve life expectancy:
Britain has been hit by one health crisis after another. First came the covid-19 pandemic—then backlogs in health and social care that the coronavirus exacerbated, and a long winter of strikes and overwhelmed emergency departments. But in the background, long before the pandemic hit, an even more disturbing story has been unfolding.
Two features make this figure even more worrying. Death comes mostly when people are old. But the slowdown in life expectancy has occurred across all age groups. Mortality rates have stalled for infants, and risen among young adults and the middle-aged. Death rates for 30- to 49-year-olds have steadily increased in Britain since around 2012, in sharp contrast with neighbouring countries.
The combined effect of the pandemic and global demographic trends can explain only some of Britain’s missing multitude. Though other rich countries have also experienced slowdowns, Britain has done the worst out of a cohort of its European peers. After stripping out the effects attributable to covid and the broad European slowdown from the toll of 700,000, you are still left with those 250,000 unexplained deaths.
The recent struggles of the National Health Service have played their part. Hospital waits of record lengths and a crisis in primary care jeopardise timely treatment. But delays in medical care cannot explain all the extra deaths, especially before the pandemic. Besides, the greatest improvements in life expectancy come not from treatment but from better diagnosis and prevention, and wider prosperity. This is where Britain appears to have fallen short. It could do much better in all three.
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