Increasing Life Expectancy – It’s far from certain!

According to this eye-catching infographic from the Office for National Statistics  1/3rd of babies born in 2013 are expected to reach 100 years of age, meaning that there will be well over 100,000 centanarians alive in the UK in 2113, which is more than 6 times the estimated 14000 alive today.

According to this scenario, the expected averarage national life-expectancy is projected to be 90.7 for men and 94.0 for women, a ten year increase compared to current (2010-12) life exptencies which are 81.7 and 82.7 years respectively.

The government has used these data (unsurprising giving that this is the ONS) to justify the rising of the state pension age, given that according to these projections people will, on average spend a third of their life in receipt of a state pension, as evidenced below (full document here)

survivingtoage100infograhic_tcm77-345385

However, this future is far from certain, and such an increase depends on a number of underlying social developments taking place – such as a reduction in the number of people smoking, an increase in medical interventions to prevent deaths from heart disease, stroke and cancer, and healthier diets and lifestyles. It is also the case that a number of other factors may serve to reduce future life-expectancy – such as the increasing cost of living in real terms driving up the number of people in poverty and the increase in inequality causing more status anxiety.

In fact if you read down the infographic, this lack of certainty is recognised as the initial figures are only the ‘principal projections’ but the low and high estimates for the number of babies born today likely to reach 100 varies from as low as 16K to as high as 259K for men and as low as 31K and as high as 271K for women.

To my mind, the real story in this data is actually the very high level of uncertainty surrounding projections in the ageing population, and the difficulties society faces planning for the future in the light of such uncertainties.

It’s unfortunate that the infographic or the government fail to highlight this, but instead focuses on the principal data in order to tell a story that might (but only might) happen.

Then again, I guess this particular manifestation of uncertainty doesn’t suit the present government’s ideological war against the public sector, whereas the message that we are all living longer serves as a plausible justification for raising the pension age and reducing the overall public sector commitment to ‘caring’ for people in their old age. It is also, of course, another effective means of punishing the poor, because the poorer you are then the earlier you die.

Related posts

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/9556/labour-markets/increase-state-pension-age/

http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/review-of-longevity-trends-to-2025-and-beyond/

http://www.longevitypanel.co.uk/docs/life-expectancy-by-gender.pdf

This is a nice series of infographics from the ONS focussing on current (2010-12 figures Life Expectancy among people aged 65+, looking at such things as the very signficant gender divide that persists into the 80 and 90 years age brackets.

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