We're not getting any younger! Or should that be older?

RSS International Conference 2021

By Nicola Rennie in Conference

Slides

At the same time as pension ages in the UK continue to rise, both academics and journalists claim that life expectancy is stalling. To investigate these claims, we look at changes in UK life expectancy growth from 1960 to present day. Using data from World Bank Open Data, we use a rolling window linear model to estimate how life expectancy has changed decade-by-decade. We find that though there has been a steep decline in life expectancy growth in the last ten years, the growth is still positive and life expectancy continues to increase.

However, just as life expectancies are not equal for men and women, neither are the changes in life expectancy growth. Whilst life expectancy has stalled for women in the UK, men continue to get older - albeit more slowly than they used to. The gap between the life expectancies for men and women is closing and we estimate that, given current trends continue, both men and women will have an equal life expectancy of 85.2 years by 2100.

We extend our analyses beyond the UK, and examine how trends in life expectancy in the last decade differ between the most and least developed countries in the world. Countries where life expectancy has stalled are identified, and we discuss the commonalities found in such countries in terms of level of development and current life expectancy age.