UK healthy life expectancy has fallen over the past decade, leaving Britain behind most comparable rich countries, a study suggests.
Healthy life expectancy is the amount of time someone spends free of illness or disability.
The sharp decline in Britain’s healthy life expectancy contrasts with the recent rise seen in most other rich countries.
The Health Foundation thinktank said the UK’s health is poor, getting worse and not seeing the same steady improvement recorded in countries such as Japan, Norway and Spain.
In its analysis of 21 countries, healthy life expectancy rose by an average of 0.4 years across the other 20.
Healthy life expectancy for men in the UK has fallen from 62.9 years in 2012-14 to 60.7 years in 2022-24, and from 63.7 to 60.9 years for women over the same period.
It means the proportion of life spent in good health has fallen from 79 per cent to 77 per cent for men and from 77 per cent to 73 per cent for women, the analysis showed.
The decline in Britons’ health in recent years is so significant that, in more than 90 per cent of the UK, people now start suffering from illness before the state pension age of 66.
“These findings reveal a stark truth: the UK’s health is going backwards,” said Dr Jennifer Dixon, the Health Foundation’s chief executive.
“The lights on the dashboard are flashing red.
“We are the most obese country in western Europe, mental ill health has surged to unprecedented levels and more people than ever before are living with chronic health conditions.”
The thinktank said obesity, which is leading to more cases of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer, and high numbers of deaths caused by alcohol, drugs and suicide help explain the loss of two years of illness-free life.
But people’s worsening self-reported health, meaning how they rate their own health in surveys, and deep health inequalities between rich and poor are also key factors, it added.
Neither Covid nor overall life expectancy, which remains stable, lies behind the fall.
“This suggests that the UK’s deterioration is not inevitable, but reflects country-specific factors,” the analysis concluded.
Health experts see healthy life expectancy as the best way of measuring a nation’s health. It is calculated using mortality rates and self-reported health surveys.
“The UK’s health is declining and falling behind most other comparable nations,” it added.
The report found that the UK was one of only five countries where healthy life expectancy has declined, and that it had fallen from 14th to 20th in the 21-country international league table, with only the US below it.
The findings help explain why a record 2.8 million people are too sick to work, why deaths are rising among 25 to 49-year-olds and why growing numbers of 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training because they have a physical or mental health condition, the thinktank added.
Responding to the grim picture painted by the analysis, the Department of Health and Social Care said the fact that the UK population is getting more unhealthy was a “disgrace”.
It pointed to the tobacco and vapes bill, which will get royal assent this week, and the ban on advertising junk food before 9pm on television as evidence of its “radical” approach to tackling the problem.