Women in poorest parts of England and Wales ‘will spend only two-thirds of life in good health'
Women living in wealthier parts of England are likely to enjoy about two more decades of healthy life, the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data has shown.
Females born between 2020 and 2022 in the most deprived areas of England were likely to spend just 65.1% of their lives in good health, compared with 81.5% in the least deprived areas, the ONS found.
The estimate for the most deprived areas is the lowest since the series began in 2013-15, when it stood at 66.3%.
'We have higher rates of ill health than ever before in this country, and that's disproportionately affecting women more than men,' said Emma Frew, a University of Birmingham health economics professor and a research professor at the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
'The impact of the cost of living crisis, the two-child cap on benefits – these disproportionately affect women more than men because it's women that tend to have more responsibility in the household, more responsibility for childcare.
'They contribute more to unpaid care, there are higher rates of mental health problems and high rates of domestic violence, which tends to focus on girls and women.'
The inequality gap between men and women has grown, with males born in 2020-22 in the most deprived areas expected to spend 70.4% of their lives in good health, compared with 84.5% for those in the least deprived.
The gap between richer and poorer areas has also widened for both genders – for females, it has grown from 19.6 years in 2013-15 to 20.2 years in 2020-22, while for males it has grown from 18.7 to 19.1.
In Wales, females born in the most deprived areas in 2020-22 can expect to spend 61.5% of their lives in good health, the lowest since those estimates began in 2013-15. In the least deprived areas the figure stands at 80.7%.
'We're seeing increasing levels of poverty because of things like the cost of living crisis, which has pushed more households into food insecurity states,' Frew said. 'We think of ourselves as being quite a developed country, but there are parts of the country that have economic and health outcomes much more similar to developing countries.'
Compared with the pre-coronavirus pandemic period of 2017-19, life expectancy at birth in England in 2020 to 2022 has decreased in the most deprived areas by 1.4 years for males, to 72.6 years, and by 1.1 years for females, to 77.7 years.
'We've got people who still have a similar level of life expectancy, but not healthy life expectancy. I think that's the key metric healthcare service and local authorities are really targeting, because it is not just getting people to live longer, but we need to get people to live healthier and longer,' Frew said.
'There needs to be a really concerted health and equality strategy that looks at those gender differences.'
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Telegraph
31 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Why 1948 was the luckiest year to be born
What do King Charles, Lulu, Gerry Adams, Eliza Manningham-Buller, Ian McEwan and Ozzy Osbourne have in common? The answer is that they were all born in Britain in 1948, widely thought to be the luckiest birth year of the 20th century. 'Everything dropped unexpectedly on our plate at exactly the time we wanted it to,' says Deborah Moggach, born in June 1948 and the award-winning author of 20 novels, including These Foolish Things, which was adapted into the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. 'It was very unfair but also very reassuring, as if the world reflected one's own burgeoning feelings – of rebellion or ecology or sex or music. You felt a sense of companionship: as if you were leading the world, or the world leading you.' There is always, of course, a danger of generalisation with social history. The experiences of Moggach, an English graduate of Bristol University who was brought up by a literary family in London, are different to those of a coal miner's daughter in Durham – or indeed those of King Charles or Ozzy Osbourne. Not only has no reputable study officially anointed the 1948-ers as the most fortunate cohort in history, a poll commissioned to generate publicity for Call the Midwife, a television show set in the mid-1950s, concluded – unconvincingly and unsurprisingly – that 1956 was actually the best year to be born. The Telegraph dived into the data and the experiences of the 1948 generation – from healthcare to housing, education to employment, music to social mobility – to test the theory. Childhood The 1948-ers were the first babies delivered by the National Health Service. 'If you were born that year, you benefited from a well-funded NHS throughout your life,' says Mark Dayan, a policy analyst at think tank Nuffield Trust. They also benefitted, he argues, from the rapid improvement in healthcare since 1890, a period that established the basics of modern medicine, from widespread vaccinations to blood transfusions. And although infant mortality rates in 1948 were nearly 10 times higher than today, maternity care had also made significant improvements during the first half of the 20th century. As soon as the 1948-ers were safely home from hospital – and as long as they avoided the worst of polio and tuberculosis – the Family Allowances Act of 1945 provided a universal benefit of five shillings per week per child. Few children born in 1948 would have strong memories of rationing, which finally ended in 1954. None would have been old enough to take part in National Service, which stopped in 1960. Meanwhile, many of their parents were enjoying the fastest rises in living standards in modern history. Amid low inflation, men's wages almost doubled between 1951 and 1961, despite working two fewer hours per week over the decade (42 vs 44). Families were increasingly lavish with this disposable income and leisure time. Car ownership rose by 25 per cent between 1957 and 1959, television ownership by 32 per cent. Sixty thousand people per week took a holiday at Butlins, while foreign holidays doubled in the 1950s (and doubled again the following decade). This rising consumption, coupled with generous tax cuts, famously led Harold Macmillan to declare in 1957: 'Most of our people have never had it so good.' The 1948-ers' parents seemed to agree, returning 'Supermac' with a majority of 100 seats in the general election of 1959. A cartoon in the Spectator pictured the prime minister surrounded by televisions and washing machines with the caption: 'Well, gentlemen, I think we all fought a good fight.' The rise of the teenager This rising leisure time, coupled with a post-war baby boom and increased urbanisation, led to the relatively new concept of the 'teenager', a word imported from America. By 1960, when the 1948-ers were on the verge of this milestone, there were some four million teenagers in Britain, fuelling significant spending on burgeoning industries such as fashion, cinemas, magazines and music. 'People start talking a lot about teenagers just when you yourself are becoming a teenager,' explains Dominic Sandbrook, an historian of post-war Britain and co-host of The Rest is History podcast. 'You have a sense of having your own tribe, a cultural self-confidence. If you're born in 1948, you're about to turn 15 when the Beatles break through – the perfect age. There's a popular culture that exists just for you, which didn't really exist before.' According to Sandbrook, the 1948-ers also avoided the sense of cultural alienation experienced by many other generations. Having enjoyed a relatively innocent 1950s childhood of Airfix models, Eagle comics and Just William stories, and an exciting teenagerhood in the 1960s, there is never, he argues, 'a cultural shift that leaves them feeling confused or marooned. They're completely fine with Bowie in the 1970s. This is a generation that drunk deep from 1960's individualism – a lot of them ended up as Thatcher voters in the 1980s.' The late-1960s also saw a raft of liberalising legislation under Roy Jenkins's tenure at the Home Office, making divorce and the contraceptive pill easier to obtain, while legalising homosexuality and abortion, just as those issues became relevant for some of those born in 1948. And although Jenkins's successor James Callaghan rejected proposals to legalise cannabis, it was still widely available. 'We could dabble and experiment without it being too venal,' says Moggach. 'The cannabis we smoked then was just enough to be pleasantly uninhibited – not this psychotic drug which kids are smoking now.' So, were there any downsides to being young then? Moggach thinks hard. 'It hurt more at the dentist,' she says, eventually. 'And there was something about the era that could make you feel left out – everyone seemed to be having the most amazing time.' Education Many of those born in 1948 were schooled for free by Rab Butler's 1944 Education Act and supported through university by the introduction of means-tested grants from 1962. The number of UK universities more than doubled in the 1960s, with Harold Wilson's government adding a further 30 polytechnics. Public expenditure on education more than doubled in the decade after 1952. Admittedly, the 11+ system for grammar school entry was highly divisive, saddling young children with a sense of failure and leading to Wilson's attempts to introduce a comprehensive system after 1965. However, it is perhaps not coincidental that social mobility declined dramatically in the final quarter of the 20th century, in stark contrast to what the Sutton Trust calls 'the former golden age of upward mobility'. 'The 1948 generation experienced the most social mobility of any generation,' says Selina Todd, a professor of modern history at the University of Oxford. This, she explains, was especially the case for women, who started to go to university in much larger numbers. 'You also see a huge increase in women who had had children go into further education in the 1970s,' she says. 'There was a chance to have a second bite at education, retraining and upskilling, and giving them better opportunities in the job market. 'For those born in 1948, it's all brand new. There's a real thrill, a real adventure: you see women going into the arts and getting involved in politics and trade unionism. And although it's true that women born later have had it easier from the start, those born in and around 1948 knew it was going to be tough. Today, young women often say when they have children, 'I didn't know it was going to be this hard.' Women back then knew it.' Employment and housing A working woman born in 1948 would have benefitted from the Equal Pay Act in 1970, passed when she was 22, and the Employment Protection Act of 1975, introducing paid maternity leave (ideal timing given that the average age of a mother that year was 26.4). The 1960s were generally a good time for anyone to enter the workforce. GDP per capita rose almost every year until 2008, while the average hours worked continued to fall steadily. Real wages increased by an average of 4.6 per cent every decade until 2008, whereupon many of the 1948-ers retired aged 60, the last year in which a majority could still take a final salary pension (this figure had fallen to 30 per cent only a year later). Real wages subsequently dropped every year between 2008 and 2014. According to a report by the Sutton Trust, the managerial and professional classes more than doubled between 1951 and 1971, offering a raft of new employment opportunities to the 1948-ers. 'The 1960s expansion in education, welfare and local government sees people going into all different kinds of work,' says Todd. 'There are sons and daughters of domestic servants and factory workers going into white-collar jobs for the first time – although you don't see many of them becoming bankers.' The big caveat to this thesis is, of course, unemployment, which remained below 5 per cent until 1976 but then averaged 9.4 per cent between 1978 and 1988. In May 1986, the unemployment rate hit 19.1 per cent in the North East compared to 10.1 per cent in the South East. 'Someone born in 1948 would have been 31 when Thatcher came to power,' says Sandbrook. 'If you were a working-class man, especially in an area of the country reliant on manufacturing, things could have been tough for quite a long time.' For many, however, the 1980s were marked by huge growths in personal wealth and cushioned by a continuing period of extraordinary rises in house prices. If a 1948-er had bought their first property in 1970, they would have paid an average price of £3,611, taking their first step on the ladder just in time for annual price increases to hit double digits for the first time in 1971 and then rise by 50 per cent in 1973. Later generations missed this boom: property prices increased by more than three-fold in the 1970s, compared to not even doubling in the 1980s. If you bought in 1990, your property probably wouldn't recover its value until 1996. As long as their household finances could withstand the high inflation and interest rates of the 1970s, the property of an average 1948-er homeowner buying in 1970 would increase 65-fold by 2025. In London and the South East, those figures were even more eye-watering. 'My great-aunt died in the late 1960s and left me and my three sisters a house just off the Fulham Road,' says Moggach. 'We sold it for £12,000, divided up that money between us and I got on the property ladder. God knows what that house would be worth now [probably £3-£4 million]. We all just sat on our behinds and made thousands and thousands of pounds a year – it was insane.' Today Many 1948-ers certainly seem to have enjoyed a blessed life in the Goldilocks zone of wealth, health, personal liberty and state support from cradle to grave. But is 2025 a good time to be 77 years old? Again, of course, it depends. Moggach feels terribly guilty about her good fortune and the prospect of being a burden on the NHS. 'Everyone I know is having scans and illnesses and tripping over and having new knees. I don't think it's a good time to be frail in any way. The state can't scoop you up, partly because people my age, who had it so easy, are now a drain on the state. I'm amazed that a younger generation hasn't risen up and breached the barricades.' According to Mark Dayan from the Nuffield Trust, the NHS is actually better in some ways today than it was a decade ago, 'but access to care is getting worse and the state of social care is very bad'. Not that this appears to be causing undue alarm for many 1948-ers. A report from the Office of National Statistics in April revealed that those aged over 70 are less likely to experience depressive symptoms than any other age group. Its other findings, which presumably enjoy a degree of correlation, include that they are more likely to trust other people, eat healthily, spend time outdoors and feel a sense of belonging in their community. The only area in which the over-70s are more negative than younger people is in their hopefulness for the future – perhaps partly in the suspicion that no subsequent generation will ever have it quite so good again.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
More sugar than chocolate: The best and worst alcohol-free beers for your health
What a time to be alive if you're a teetotaller. Alcohol-free and low-alcohol beers (which typically contain up to 0.5% ABV – around the same amount of alcohol you would find in a ripe banana), are big business. No longer an insipid, metallic-tasting booby prize for designated drivers, the thirst for them is insatiable – with the market worth £380 million in 2024 – and encompasses a dizzying range of stouts, porters and craft wheat beers. However, before you knock them back with joyful abandon, it's worth having a closer look at the label, as many contain a lot more sugar and calories than you may think. There's that attractive-looking bottle of alcohol-free stout which contains more sugar than a Galaxy chocolate bar and enticing blonde beers with more calories than a packet of salty crisps. Which are the best options and the ones to avoid then? From Guinness to Lucky Saint, we rank the leading brands and speak to the experts about how much is safe to drink. The best and worst alcohol-free beers for your health Rated by Sam Rice, Telegraph nutrition expert Nøgne Ø Svart/Hvit Milk Stout Innis & Gunn 0.0% lager Leffe Blonde 0% Abbey Ale Madrí Excepcional 0% Brewdog Punk IPA Alcohol Free Guinness 0.0 Lucky Saint Alcohol Free Lager 7. Nøgne Ø Svart/Hvit Milk Stout Ingredients: water, malted barley, lactose, hops, yeast Wowzers, this wholesome-looking bottle contains a whopping 23g of sugar, the highest by far of those tested. The clue is in the name; lactose is the sugar found in milk, and it has been added here to give the stout its characteristic creamy mouthfeel. Yeast cannot ferment lactose, so it remains in the finished beer, providing a distinct sweetness. A 330ml bottle contains 23g of sugar, equal to a 42g bar of Galaxy chocolate. I think I know which I'd choose, but if you like this beer, then, like Galaxy, it's probably best kept as a treat. Verdict: One point for the fact that it's alcohol free. 6. Innis & Gunn 0.0% lager Ingredients: water, barley, oats, hops. A simple ingredients list is always a great start when it comes to nutrition, but sadly, that's where the good news ends, as this beer is the second-highest in sugar, 4.5g per 100ml, compared with the minuscule 0.1g in Lucky Saint. One 440ml can contains two thirds of the recommended daily sugar intake set by the NHS, which is 30g. Unless you absolutely love this for the taste, which is a valid reason to drink anything, I'd probably choose something else. Verdict: Just the one point for being alcohol-free. 5. Leffe Blonde 0% Abbey Ale Ingredients: water, barley malt, maize, barley, sugar, hops, natural aromas. What this beer gives with one hand – it's pretty low in sugar – it takes with the other; it's the highest in calories of the beers featured, with almost three times that of the Brewdog Punk AF. Blonde ales are an unfiltered beer style known for being high in silicon, or more specifically, orthosilicic acid, which helps the body to build and maintain healthy bones, and may help guard against conditions such as osteoporosis. Each 250ml bottle contains 100 calories, so a couple of those and you're consuming more calories than a standard bag of Walker's ready salted crisps. Verdict: An extra half a point for the silicon. 4. Madrí Excepcional 0%. Ingredients: water, barley malt, wheat, barley, glucose syrup, sucrose, natural flavourings, hops. This beer sits right in the middle of the pack for calories and sugar, so if you love that cool, crisp Spanish cerveza-style lager, then this might be the one for you. But before you pop the top, the addition of glucose syrup, sucrose, and natural flavourings raises a nutritional red flag – we are entering UPF territory here. Verdict: The additives let this down. 3. Brewdog Punk IPA Alcohol Free Ingredients: water, lactose, malted barley, hops, yeast, malted oats, malted wheat, lactic acid. While Brewdog Punk IPA was the lowest in calories, just edging out Lucky Saint, it was much higher in sugar, presumably due to the lactose. This is a method for adding body to beer after the alcohol has been removed. With 6g of sugar per 330ml, this would add up pretty rapidly if you were to enjoy a few cans in the sun. Sometimes, even alcohol-free beers should be enjoyed in moderation. Verdict: Shame about the sugar. 2. Guinness 0.0 Ingredients: water, malted barley, barley, roasted barley, fructose, natural flavourings, hops, yeast I'm reliably informed by beer connoisseurs (my husband!) that Guinness 0.0 is the closest to the real thing of all the zero-alcohol beers. This is likely because it is brewed in the same manner as regular Guinness, utilising a cold filtration method to remove the alcohol. This preserves the flavour as well as plant compounds called polyphenols from the barley, which act as antioxidants in the body to protect cells against cancer-causing compounds called free radicals. Polyphenols are also prebiotics, which feed our good gut bacteria, and they can even help improve circulation and blood pressure. Guinness famously contains energy-boosting iron, too. A 440ml can contains only as many calories as a single Hobnob biscuit, which is half the calories of regular Guinness, and it's also very low in sugar. A win in my book. Verdict: One of the best on the market. 1. Lucky Saint Alcohol Free Lager Ingredients: water, malted barley, hops, yeast. This is the alcohol-free lager I have in my fridge at home. It has a delicious fruitiness and a paltry 53 calories and 0.3g of sugar per can. This simple, unfiltered beer is made with just four ingredients and no additions, such as aromas or flavourings. You'll also be getting a hit of plant polyphenols for some extra gut goodness. Bravo Lucky Saint, you win! Verdict: Not much wrong with this. FAQs How much is safe to drink? A recent study by a research team from University of California San Diego, Knappschaft Kliniken in Germany and the University of the Basque Country in Spain, which was published in the journal Nutrients, suggests that even two bottles of non-alcoholic beer a day is enough to increase blood sugar levels. The authors conclude: 'The consumption of non-alcoholic beverages has unfavourable effects on metabolism, mainly driven by their calorie and sugar contents.' The researchers indicated a long-term risk of Type 2 diabetes and obesity. The study, however, was limited. The cohort was restricted to 44 healthy young men who drank either two 330ml bottles of alcohol-free beer or water every day for four weeks. The team conducted regular tests to check for changes in glucose and lipid metabolism, liver enzymes, body composition, and the composition of the men's gut microbiome – and compared the results between the alcohol free beer drinkers and the water drinkers, so it was not surprising these drinkers fared worse. Nevertheless, consuming alcohol-free beers with high levels of calories and sugar, over time and at volume could have more serious implications for health. What are the main health risks? Clearly, 'the biggest benefit to alcohol-free beer is cutting out the alcohol and typically they add fewer calories to your diet,' says Matt Coulshead, the research and development manager at Gaba Labs, which specialises in neuropsychopharmacology and synthetic chemistry. But the main problem is that the sugar and calorie content varies widely between the different types of beers. The research findings revealed that mixed beer – alcohol-free beer with added lemon or orange soda, for example, raised long-term blood sugar levels and fats in the bloodstream, and wheat beer increased insulin and blood fats. And some lagers, such as one 440ml can of Innis & Gunn 0.0% lager beer, contains 20g of sugar, two thirds of the recommended daily intake. (The NHS recommends that adults consume no more than 30g of added sugar a day, approximately 7tsp.) It's not all bad news, however. According to the NHS, it is not usually a serious problem if your blood sugar is slightly high for a short time – it is when it is sustained that high blood sugar can raise the risk of pre-diabetes and Type 2 diabetes. Dr Federica Amati, the head nutritionist and global head of communications at Zoe, explains: 'If you consume these products every so often, they're unlikely to do much harm – or good. However, if you're having several cans every day, we don't really know what effects they might have, but it's unlikely to be neutral. These drinks are still providing liquid calories, which we know contribute to worse metabolic health outcomes compared with drinking water, tea or coffee, for example. 'Consuming any sugar and energy in liquid is more harmful for health,' says Dr Amati. 'This is because you can consume them quickly, and we know that the speed you eat – or in this case, drink – increases the risk of weight gain. One can every now and then is only contributing a small amount to our overall dietary pattern, but I wouldn't make this my main drink of choice. It's worth noting that low-alcohol beers do still contain some alcohol. It's in small amounts, but it may still have some negative effects.' The verdict: are non-alcoholic beers really bad for you? Dr Amati concludes: 'In nutrition, the most important question is 'what is it replacing?' If you swap standard beer for non-alcoholic beer, it's absolutely a healthier option. No question. If you swap regular fizzy pop for low-alcohol beer, that's probably a little better. But if you swapped low-alcohol beer for water or kombucha, that's even healthier. 'As with any soft drinks, moderation is key. But if you love the taste of beer, and it's replacing regular beer, you're making a solid choice.'
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Too late to fix Guernsey hospital project black hole, says deputy
The new president of Guernsey's Health and Social Care Committee (HSC) has conceded there was "no political oversight" of the first phase of the hospital modernisation week the BBC revealed the project to build a new critical care unit was delayed because of problems with the building work. Deputy George Oswald, who was a non-States member of the last HSC committee, said "the States does not handle big budget projects well". "I think the problem is lack of resourcing, we try and do things on the cheap probably because we know we're a small island with a small community and not a lot of money," he said. HSC said "sadly but unavoidably, the CCU would continue to be delayed until essential remedial works have been completed" but it did not give a Rihoys and Son said the work to extend the hospital had been BBC understands work is under way to fix the defects by contractors Rihoys and Son, which was commissioned to work on the full hospital modernisation was negotiating with Rihoys about how this work would be funded. Speaking about the problems, Oswald said: "We don't invest in the technical experts we need right at the beginning to ensure the project goes the right way. "I think that was very apparent in phase two."Last year it was revealed officers knew about a potential £30m overspend for phase 2 of the hospital modernisation project. It led to an inquiry which found no problems with the way the States managed big building projects and a review of the hospital project by a UK firm, which has not been publicly released. 'Technologically difficult' Oswald said: "That has now been resolved but possibly too late to influence the problem with the black hole we had and as far as I'm aware certainly didn't involve it at stage one. "It was all sourced in-house because that was the cheapest option but building hospitals and commissioning hospitals is an expensive and technologically difficult thing to do."The NHS is littered with examples of where hospital builds have gone wrong to the detriment of both the local population and also sometimes to the detriment of the builders who got themselves involved in it."
