Healthy life expectancy trends in the UK: a watershed moment (The Health Foundation, 26 April 2026)

Summary

This analysis from The Health Foundation examines how healthy life expectancy in the UK has changed over the past decade, how it varies across local areas and how these trends compare with other high-income countries.

Content

• Healthy life expectancy – the average number of years a person would expect to live in good health based on current mortality rates and levels of self-reported good health – is a key measure of the population’s health, providing a more comprehensive picture of the UK’s health than life expectancy alone.
• Over the decade 2012–14 to 2022–24, healthy life expectancy in the UK fell by about 2 years, to 60.7 years for males and 60.9 years for females. England, Scotland and Wales all saw steep declines, while the fall in Northern Ireland was more modest.
• The vast majority of local areas in Great Britain saw a decline over the decade, with healthy life expectancy having now fallen below the state pension age of 66 years in more than 90% of areas. In more than 1 in 10 local areas, healthy life expectancy is below 55 years.
• Deep inequalities in healthy life expectancy between affluent and deprived areas have widened. The gap between the most and least deprived deciles in England is now 19.4 years for males and 20.3 years for females.
• At the UK level, life expectancy has remained broadly stable, indicating that the drop in healthy life expectancy is largely driven by self-reported health and cannot simply be explained by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in the most deprived areas, life expectancy has still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
• Of 21 high-income countries, the UK is one of only five that saw healthy life expectancy fall between 2011 and 2021, and had the second steepest decline. As a result, the UK has fallen from 14th to 20th out of these countries – only the United States now has a lower healthy life expectancy.
• These findings reinforce growing evidence about declining health in the UK, particularly among the working-age population. Successive governments have failed to take the long-term action needed to address this, resulting in a growing economic and fiscal impact as well as a substantial human cost.
• A new approach is needed to rebuild the UK’s health that puts improving health on a par with delivering economic growth at the heart of government policy. This should be supported by cross-government action on the wider factors that shape people’s health, a shift to prevention and a new strategy to address economic and health inequalities.