Living in the poorest areas of England could cost you almost five years of your life, a report on ageing has revealed.
Men living in the poorest areas of the country can expect to live 4.4 fewer years on average than those living in the wealthiest areas of England. While women live 3.7 years fewer on average.
But when comparing the life expectancy of individual local authority areas, the gap grows even wider to a full decade for men and eight years for women.
These stark differences in life expectancy were highlighted in the State of Ageing report 2025 by the charity Centre for Ageing Better.
Regional inequalities in health are growing, with the bottom fifth of local authority areas in terms of wealth overwhelmingly in the north of England and predominately in urban areas.
Meanwhile, the richest fifth are almost exclusively made up of local authorities from the Midlands, the East of England, London and the South East and are significantly more likely to be rural.
The average life expectancy at birth for men in the local authority areas with the lowest incomes in England is 77 years compared to 81.4 years for men living in the wealthiest.
For women, the average life expectancy at birth in areas with the lowest incomes is 81.2 years, compared with 84.9 years in the highest.
At the local authority level, men living in the district of Hart in Hampshire (83.4 years) can expect to live a full decade longer than men in Blackpool (73.1 years) while women in Kensington and Chelsea (86.5 years) can expect to live almost eight years longer than women in Blackpool (78.9) for women.
To tackle this “deadly postcode lottery”, the Centre for Ageing Better is calling for the creation of an independent Commissioner for Older People and Aging to create a focus for government departments to reduce inequality later in life.
The charity is also calling for a reversal of cuts that have reduced the public health grant by a quarter over the past eight years.
“Living in a part of the country where good quality jobs and opportunity is scarce, and where financial insecurity and poverty is rife, is robbing people of their health in later life and depriving them of years spent with loved ones. This is the true human cost of our very unequal society,” Dr Carole Easton OBE, chief executive at the Centre for Ageing Better, said.
She added: “Coordinated, urgent action is needed across government, society, and communities to put us back on the road to recovery. A commissioner for older people and ageing is urgently needed to lead those efforts. Everyone benefits when older people can live fulfilling, engaged, independent lives in age-friendly societies.”
However, it’s not just life expectancy that matters when it comes to measuring the nation’s health and prosperity – the length of time that’s lived in good health also matters.
Healthy life expectancy at birth has undergone a striking decline in England as a whole and in all regions except for London, with the proportion of life spent living in good health at its lowest since 2013.
The charity warned this will have economic implications because health expectancy determines how long we can stay in work, with repercussions for our financial security in later life and our requirements for health and care.
For the period between 2021 to 2023, the average healthy life expectancy in England was 61.5 years for men and 61.9 years for women. So, on average, a man in England can expect to live 78 per cent of his life in good health while the proportion for a woman is 74.5 per cent.
The report also highlighted that older people living in local authority areas with the highest proportion of residents on low incomes are almost three times as likely to be disabled than those living in the areas of the country with the lowest proportions.
People aged 50 to 64 living in Blackpool are almost three times as likely to be disabled (32 per cent) as people living in Elmbridge in Surrey.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Life chances and life expectancy should not be determined by your postcode. Through our Plan for Change, we are shifting focus from sickness to prevention, targeting the drivers of ill health and catching the biggest killers earlier.”