Life expectancy in England reached a provisional record in 2025, but the national high concealed a widening divide between northern and southern regions, according to an analysis reported by The Guardian on Sunday and updated early Monday. Men could expect to live about 80 years and women nearly 84, yet the King's Fund found that most gains over the past decade occurred in London, the South East, South West and East.
London recorded an increase of nearly one year in the decade to 2023-25 despite experiencing the steepest pandemic-era fall. By contrast, the North West, North East, Yorkshire and the Humber, West Midlands and East Midlands, which together contain about half of England's population, saw little or no improvement. The health charity linked this pattern to higher deprivation and a greater burden of heart disease, cancer, suicide, and deaths associated with alcohol and drugs.
The regional disparity now means a person in London can expect to live about three years longer than someone in the North East, the King's Fund said. Local differences are larger: life expectancy in Blackpool is about 10 years shorter for men and eight years shorter for women than in Hart, Hampshire. Office for National Statistics data separately show a clear geographical divide, with all 10 local areas recording the highest male life expectancy in 2022-24 located in southern England.
Veena Raleigh, a senior fellow at the King's Fund, said the most deprived 30 percent of areas experienced either falling or unchanged life expectancy during the decade, while the least deprived 30 percent gained about half a year. She argued that narrowing the gap requires action beyond health services, including secure employment, fair pay, adequate housing, clean air, accessible transport and affordable healthy food.
Healthy life expectancy, which estimates years spent in good health, fell in every English region in the decade to 2022-24. People now spend about 2.5 additional years in poor health on average. The regional gap remains roughly six to seven years and can reach 20 years between the most and least deprived places, leaving disadvantaged communities with both shorter lives and a larger share of life affected by illness.
England's NHS plan aims to raise healthy life expectancy for everyone and halve the difference between the richest and poorest communities. The King's Fund described that ambition as unrealistic without population-health improvements on a scale not achieved for decades. The latest figures therefore present two simultaneous outcomes: national longevity has recovered to a high, while the distribution of those gains has become more unequal.
Comments