Danny Dorling, who is Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford and is Associate Professor of Social Science and Public Policy, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, wrote a blog post for the Conversation and Brave New Europe, from which I reproduce the following part:
The stagnation in life expectancy [in the UK] is no longer being treated as a “blip”. It is now projected to be the new norm. But the ONS does not explicitly state this in its projections for the future. To calculate the figure of a million lives lost you have to subtract all the future deaths now predicted in the 2017 report, which was based on data from 2016, from those projected two years ago, based on a 2014 projection.
Every year up until at least the year 2084, people across the UK are now expected to die earlier. Already in the 12 months between July 2016 and June 2017, we calculated that an additional 39,307 more people have died than were expected to die under the previous projections. Over a third, or 13,440, of those additional deaths have been of women aged 80 or more who are now dying earlier than was expected. But 7% of these extra deaths in 2016-17 were of people aged between 20 and 60: almost 2,000 more younger men and 1,000 more younger women in this age group have died than would have if progress had not stalled. So whatever is happening is affecting young people too.
The projection that there will be a million extra deaths by 2058 is not due to the fact that there will simply be more people living in the UK in the future. By contrast, the ONS now projects less inward migration. The million extra early deaths are not due to more expected births: the ONS now projects lower birth rates. The extra million early deaths are simply the result of mortality rates either having risen or having stalled in recent years. The ONS now considers that this will have a serious impact on life expectancy in the UK and population numbers for decades to come.
The argument they make is clear. As they put it:
Whatever has happened it is not a sudden worsening of the healthy behaviour of people in the UK. It is not a sudden rise in obesity or some additional carelessness about looking after ourselves. Neither obesity nor any other human behaviour linked to poor health such as smoking or drinking alcohol has seen a sudden rise. In fact, health complaints from smoking have plummeted since the introduction of the 2007 ban on smoking in public places. The number of Britons who smoke is at its lowest level.
The proportion of adults who drink alcohol in the UK is also currently at its lowest level since 2005. Obesity is still rising, but it has been for decades now, and the age groups now dying in high numbers — the over 80s — are not yet those who became obese in recent decades.
The most likely culprit, by far, is austerity, including the effect of the cuts to social and health care services.
We will not live longer by all taking responsibility just for ourselves alone, looking after just us and our families, trying to get fitter, eat better and worry less. This is not how the health of whole nations improves. It is about all of us, not just one of us. That is why it is a million years of life. And we should not allow that million to be announced quietly, like the inevitable dying of the light.
As we argue in our new book, demography is not destiny. Projections are not predictions. There is no preordained inevitability that a million years of life need be lost, but already, 120,000 have been by 2017.
The rest of those million early deaths could be avoided. There is no biological reason why life expectancy should be so low in the UK compared to almost all other affluent nations. The social sciences and epidemiologists between them have the answers, but only through politics comes the power to make the changes that are now so urgently needed.
Let me put it another way: austerity is going to cost a million lives.
And I say that's a price not worth paying when there is no reason at all for a government to balance its books.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
[…] http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/12/02/austerity-will-cost-a-million-lives-of-which-120000-ha… […]
So those who are dying are the over 80 year olds.
My own view is that’s very good news as those who get this far in life in good health are few.
100 years ago 45 was good then it was 3 score and 10 by the time I was a boy.
Take life for what it is don’t push the boundaries
Well at least you’re honest about your indifference to others
I hope you can live with your conscience
And that you’ll be comfortable about this when your time comes and so ‘don’t mind me: i’ll die on a trolley whilst you treat the others in the queue’.
I suspect though that you won’t. I suspect you’ll be the one screaming and shouting for attention
If people die in their 80s because their time is done and they cannot be saved then fair enough.
But many of these people will be suffering neglect, isolation and the denial of treatments that could give them more good-quality life.
The idea that we would allow this because of a “need” to protect the interests of the very wealthy or cowardice on the part of the political class (not being prepared to tax properly) makes me very angry.
In my view cradle to grave care (including social care where needed) should be part of the contract that the government makes with the people.
Frankly this is nonsense. Projections based on assumptions based on estimates followed by ‘the most likely explanation is austerity’ with absolutely no evidence to back up the claim.
But we do know, for a fact, that socialist centrally managed states of the sort you favour have caused the deaths of 10s of millions already with their inept economic policies and the oppression that inevitably follows.
I am not in any way in favour of socialist centrally managed states, which is your first error
Second, the evidence that austerity has caused excess deaths in the NHS is very strong
Third, the comparison made is with EU countries in the main. Not many socialists centrally managed states there these days
You are the one offering complete nonsense
‘Socialist centrist states’ is scare mongering. Socialism can happen by majority choice including the extent of it. It can also end itself by majority choice.
Democratic socialists know that socialism by consensus in a protected democracy will give socialism.
And capitalists know it too. Which is why the spread nonsense about ‘enforced’ and ‘regime’ socialism in order to prevent democracy evolving into sharing wealth sanely and fairly.
Paul Richards
Now then. There is no doubt that there have been states purporting to be socialist or communist who have indeed killed hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of their own people. You are right – there is no excuse for any of this. It’s deplorable.
But these states are not alone in their destruction of human life.
Pinochet’s Chile, Franco’s Spain (all very right wing I’m sure you’d agree) were all guilty of the same violence towards their populations. South America’s ‘previous’ on this sort of stuff is well known.
And what about America’s war with Vietnam – perpetrated in the name of ‘freedom’? Leading to the bombing of Cambodia and Laos (which led to the Khmer Rouge no less – well done President Johnson).
How many slaves died in the white mans slave trade? Was that organised by socialists – a Trotsky sect maybe?
Was the American Government who robbed the native North American Indians of their lands and eviscerated their tribes a socialist one?
We could also put a mention in for capitalism itself – how many men and women around the world have gone to work in unsafe mines and factories and not come home in the name of profit since the dawn of the industrial revolution?
And what about dear olde England – who willingly went to a manufactured war in Iraq that resulted in huge loss of life to the Iraqi population? Just so the UK too could be seen to loyal to its old friend America and get its hands on a new oil supply and also pick up some contracting titbits from the top table dominated by the USA?
I feel that yours is a very one sided view of history Paul. If you really are passionate about justice then you cannot ignore the harm done by ANY state or system regardless of its political complexion.
Thanks PSR
You can’t help read this and smile:
” 2,000 more younger men and 1,000 more younger women in this age group have died than would have if progress had not stalled. ”
So this is not a claim that more people are dying, but a claim that progress is the default state and comparing the death count to that.
Progress is the default state
Why smile when that’s a fact?
It is noticeable that the people that decry these statistics and their link with austerity (a few on here already) fail to offer up any alternative theory. I would wish that people that don’t care about the bulk of the population were brave enough to just say so rather than hiding behind weasel words.
If you were to press them I would expect the old “personal responsibility” BS to be trotted out. But in matters like these only government policy will dramatically alter outcomes.
I acknowledge that the obesity crisis is ruled out as a cause of the change in mortality rates, but when it does become a factor in the future we can expect yet more hand-wringing about personal responsibility. This will ignore the role of food companies in formulating foods to encourage over-eating (and advertising encouraging the same) and the pathetic lack of regulation of the sector.
“I would wish that people that don’t care about the bulk of the population were brave enough to just say so rather than hiding behind weasel words.”
I agree.
Also there seems to be a profound lack of imagination in that they believe these effects will be felt by other people out there amongst “the bulk of the population” and will not impact on them personally. They forget that if for example they became seriously ill tomorrow they might also be acutely exposed to the real effects of austerity, their survival totally dependant on underfunded, understaffed and under-equipped emergency services, A&E departments, and hospital wards.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-02-20-30000-excess-deaths-2015-linked-cuts-health-and-social-care#
This is the only peer reviewed study, that I know of, that has looked into the unexpected extra deaths in 2015. They found no other plausible reason other than the cuts to NHS and social care.
This in itself isn’t a scandal in my eyes, as sometimes there are unintended consequences in ones actions. The scandal is however that the government policy hasn’t been put on hold whilst they investigate, via whichever mechanism that is best able, to establish whether their policy is caused these deaths and likely to cause more.
Frankly this lack of action is indefensible and, in moral terms, evil.
Agreed
Hi Ken,
Absolutely agree with this point. In this instance there is a purely moral aspect to it, since anyone with a brain could have predicted (or very quickly seen the evidence) of the impact that that restricting funding of the NHS/social care to less than is required would have.
However it also points to a general problem with government policy, in that it is not nimble enough and doesn’t move to address the (sometimes) unintended consequences of policy programs.
Why do you assume it is an unintended consequence? The treatment of the disabled appears to be cry conscious. Isn’t it part of the nudge theory- nudging us to get private healthcare? The nudge will be a shove in the next couple of years as Accountable Care organisations (ACO) come into being with a defined population budget that they will not be overspending as I suspect the ACO will be a private for profit company such as United Health Care.
Deeply worrying – and no statutory basis at all
Hi,
I’m not assuming that this consequence is unintended – first para makes that clear. This government has shown absolute disdain for the lives of the least fortunate in society and I absolutely deplore that.
Interesting link, Ken M. Thanks for that. (So much ‘stuff’ out there we miss so much of it)
“Given the relentless nature of the cuts, and potential link to rising mortality, we ask why is the search for a cause not being pursued with more urgency?'” is the parting shot, final question.
The answer seems inescapable: This government does not care. This is not surprising to any one (who like me) believes that the mission of the Conservative party is to look after the interests of those in society best capable of looking after their own interests. These people live in a bubble of self reinforcing and self perpetuating, self interest. It smacks of a perverse sort of ‘Social Darwinism’.
When I say perverse, I mean that it is taking the common, mistaken and false interpretation of what Dawkins was trying to explain in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’. Dawkins was unwittingly responsible for introducing into the language an expression which in its turn is as badly (perhaps one might say willfully) misunderstood as the idea of ‘The survival of the fittest’ was a century (or thereabouts) earlier.
I’d be interested to know if anyone can offer alternative explanations.
The rogues gallery listed by PSR cannot honestly believe that the fifth or sixth wealthiest nation in the world cannot ‘afford’ to provide an adequate standard of living for its population. They must realise that they are making a callous political choice to thrive financially at the expense of others.
That is not stupidity, or ignorance; it’s something much more unpleasant.
So now the GREED of the bankers and the tory partys murder’s austerity policy may lead to a million deaths
And we get some Banker saying that Corbyn is a danger to the country how many people must he let die it’s time to kick the tory/bankers out
Danny Dorling should be known as the ‘Revelator’.
His use of geography to reify the huge disparities in wealth, health and life chances in the country (to name but a few) is truly outstanding but all too often ignored by politicians who just cannot accept that the UK is going backwards not forwards in terms of social development.
One map of his can say the equivalent of thousands of words. And more.
This weekend I watched the superb BBC production of Bleak House again (the one with Anna Maxwell Martin as Esther and Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock) and I mused on a scene where Mr Jarndyce and his household are present at the death of a crossing boy they have tried to help who has no access to a warm place to live and healthcare.
Jarndyce laments as the boy dies:
“Dead, your majesty.
Dead, my lords and gentlemen.
Dead, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order.
Dead, men and women, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts.
And dying thus around us every day.”
As austerity continues, are we once more on the way to having a Dickensian world like this again?
Yes
In a word
oophs – very not cry!
The BMJ published a report on the 120,000 deaths and the link to austerity and the BBC refused to broadcast its findings because some so-called independent review body, the Science Media Centre, said its conclusions were highly speculative. Yet they give ample air-time to the UK’s chief climate change denier and failed ex-chanceller Nigel Lawson whose views can’t even be described politely as “speculative”. The BBC is the Establishment’s propaganda arm.
Full story here: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2017/11/20/distorting-the-news-on-economic-murder/
[…] Austerity will cost a million lives of which 120,000 have already been lost […]
Could I just check a couple of points:
– is not the ONS saying that life expectancy in future years will be reduced compared to 2010 estimates?
– and that some of the reasons for this are antibiotic resistance and ‘less optimistic views’ about medical improvements
– and thus, people will die earlier than previously estimated.
So, ‘cost a million lives’ is actually a million people will die earlier (eg at 84 not 85) in the future
Of course it is earlier deaths we are talking about
But the reasoning is what is being questioned
And the fact that it is a reversal that is being highlighted
Plus the fact that these deaths are already happening and austerity is the only obvious cause
And that has to be true: the issue is not being found elsewhere and we are not tat genetically different so other variables must be in play. Spend is one, over a range of issues
J A Rank says:
December 3 2017 at 1:02 pm
“Could I just check a couple of points:” Debating points I presume (?)
“— and that some of the reasons for this are antibiotic resistance and ‘less optimistic views’ about medical improvements
— and thus, people will die earlier than previously estimated.”
Antibiotic resistance is not just some inevitable force of nature over which we have no control. It’s the result of political failure at some very basic levels.
1) Early ignorance of the speed with which bacteria develop (evolve) resistance to antibiotics. – This is now well understood, but some level of careless prescription and utilisation persists.
2) Pressure on GPs to provide magic bullet solutions in overly short consultations with patients. This is driven mostly by short-sighted funding constraints stipulated for political and financial reasons which are direct result of allowing health services to be driven by bean-counters rather than educated and experienced medical professionals. (Well-educated medical professionals are getting thinner on the ground rather than more plentiful as should be the case, and that is also a result of bean-counters getting control of the education process and reducing it to a training programme as if training mechanics to fix vehicles)
3) Blind faith in ‘The Market’ to drive medical advances. The market mechanism encourages the pharmaceutical industry to look for lucrative low hanging fruit. So we have statins for example which are expensively consumed by millions of ‘patients’ who in all probability derive no benefit from taking them. Yes, they measurably reduce cholesterol levels: bean counters love that it produces figures to put in boxes, but there is no consistent link between cholesterol levels and health outcomes. Lots more research needed, but nobody prepared to pay for it and the Pharma companies are racking up profits so that’s fine (?). No I don’t think so.
4) Reduction in University research funding for ‘blue sky’ research has been eviscerated. Funding now relies to an unhealthy extent on Industry sponsorship. Industry isn’t interested in blue skies it’s only interested in avenues with profit potential.
5) Other nonsenses which are the result of political dogmatists sticking their nebs into things they don’t understand and have no understanding nor experience of. We, and they themselves, apparently believe that they are ‘technocrats’ working on objective scientific (pah!) principles.
There’s nothing inevitable about any of this unless you accept that the only way to run a society is on cock-a-manie neoliberal economic principles.
Its not really too hard to understand intuitively – if people have to wait longer for treatment, on trolleys or for access to specialists, for ambulances, or treatment is withheld, more will die as a consequence.
I happen to know the main researcher behind this (that KenM refers to) – this was very rigorously researched and reviewed by people with deep medical and social knowledge. The results were obviously contentious and initially the BMJ would not publish them. They’ve had a tough time and taken flack
Hunt has tried to rubbish them but his facility, not to say disingenuousness with statistics is well known. The BBCs reluctance to take them seriously is a sad reflection on the role of the BBC today. The comparison with the ignorance of Nigel Lawson, that go-to man for BBC looking for climate change expertise is well made.
The good news is that the work continues – this is not going to go away. Challenging for those ageing Mail and Telegraph readers, enthusiasticaly voting for the Tories and Brexit
It is said, and it was said in my hearing at a gathering of the Mental Health Trust I was formerly a governor of, by a senior mental health practitioner that statistics indicate that social isolation is a more reliable indicator of early death than any other single factor -that includes smoking , drinking heart disease and all sorts of stuff to which flesh is heir.
A reduction in levels of adult alcohol consumption could be expected to be indicative of lowering life expectancy. Since time immemorial alcohol has been the glue of society and poorer people are being priced out of it. (The damage alcohol causes to some lives can be catastrophic, but it is numerically minor. The contrast these days between the cost of drink-it-at-home-from-the-supermarket and drink it in company down the pub is extreme and destructive to society. The ‘health fascists’ are getting this wrong. The young ‘uns go out with a bottle of vodka inside them before they start their evening.
Forty years of Thatcherite and neoliberal mean-mindedness has produced a non social society and we see its results in these statistics I suspect.
Misery is what kills people early. We literally lose the will to live.
Mr Murphy. Certainly reading this blog could cause people to lose the will to live.
There is some speculative research that something is happening. At the same time there is so-called austerity so in your blinkered universe the two must be linked.
Ok if that’s the silly game you are playing, how about this….
Neoliberal policies have been in place since the late 70s. Since then average life span has increased by around 8 years. The only possible conclusion is that neoliberal policies have added 520 million years to the lives of the 65 million people in the UK.
520 million years. All thanks to Mrs Thatcher. It’s the only conclusion. 8 extra years each. You should be thanking her every morning.
See how silly and vacuous these sort of daft claims are?
But actually the rate of increase slowed
And that’s what’s really telling
And why did it slow? Because public works deliver the real growth. Just look at the long time series
Paul Richards
The increase of 8 years extra longevity since ‘Thatcherism’ is a very spurious claim indeed Sir.
‘Thatcherism’ effectively ended in early 1980’s after the Brixton and Liverpool riots. What we had after that was the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) led by Hesletine for communities where the Tories effectively (and secretly) abandoned the hard-nosed monetarist policies because they realised that they’d gone too far and pumped investment in. They got scared Paul. In fact Thatcher can be seen on YouTube telling an interviewer that she had ‘never been a monetarist’ – which was a bare faced lie by the way that only she could pull off.
However, ‘Thatcherism’ endured as brand because of course as it is pure dogma (even though she was one of the most unpopular PMs in this country – I mean look at the Poll Tax and how it brought her down).
It is not neo-liberalism that has increased people’s lives that when you consider in the same timespan wages have been falling for working people and we have seen a growth in jobs being exported abroad.
What has been happening in that time is a growing awareness of health issues and advances in medicine and care. But as Richard and others here say, all that began to stop from 2010, when the Tories and their supine Lib Dem partners brought in austerity and a desire to revisit the failed credo of ‘Thatcherism’.
Your crude analysis is typically bottom line in a way that is typically modern Tory. It is purely quantitative. If there are 520 million more lives then you fail (as you would Dear Paul) to assess the QUALITY of those 520 million years.
All I see is 520 million years of extra misery caused by reduced wages, benefit payments, continued austerity and BREXIT too for extra measure. Other recent research has pointed to drops in life expectancy after nigh on 7 years of Tory austerity in this country which is simply not acceptable for a nation as supposedly advanced as this.
But you fail to see this as you seem to live in the icy bubble that is Thatcherite neo-liberalism. I invite you to get out of your bubble and step into the real world. Be a mensch: come on in, into the warmth.
Thanks
“All thanks to Mrs Thatcher.”
Mrs Thatcher’s publicity machine was and is so good that even Mr Murphy doesn’t accept that the woman was deeply stupid.
If you buy the Thatcher myth you presumably believe she was the greatest leader since Churchill? That’s bollox aswell. Military incompetent and War Criminal. A bricklayer wasted.
They both possessed skills of oratory. What we call ‘communication skills’ these days. Neither of them had a coherent narrative.
What’s your position on Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny as matter of interest?
……some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time.
Pilgrim Slight Return says:
December 4 2017 at 9:10 am
“Thatcher can be seen on YouTube telling an interviewer that she had ‘never been a monetarist’ — which was a bare faced lie by the way that only she could pull off.”
No I don’t think so Pilgrim. Not entirely a lie she wasn’t an anything-ist except an opportunist.
Back to ‘stupid’ I’m afraid. She was trotting out the garbage being fed to her by the likes of Keith Joseph (whom she seemed to adore) and other clever-buggers. She didn’t really believe it, or understand it, nor its consequences, nor did she care.
You can call it what you like, I call it stupid. Deeply stupid.
[…] already know the UK’s NHS cannot deal with the crisis it is facing because of the ravages of austerity and unnecessary deaths are […]
Tempting though it can be, may I suggest that assuming that those one disagrees with are stupid might be unwise. It avoids the need to understand why they might be being successful and how best to counter it. Thatcher certainly was not ‘stupid’, however much one might disagree with what she did and what she stood for (as I do).
She did well academically and qualified as a barrister. Despite our Jezza’s private education he was not exactly outstanding academically. That doesn’t mean I’d think of him as ‘stupid’. Her ideas and politics were formed long before she met with Joseph, and she very much drove her cabinet – in stark contrast to the feeble prisoner that is Theresa May. One only has to think of that classic Spitting Image sketch where she is being asked what she’d like to eat and refers to the Cabinet as the vegetables – thats just how they were seen at the time. Completely driven by Thatcher
Was she deeply ideological – yes. Did that perhaps mean that she failed to understand the political impact of policies like the poll tax – of course. And did she lose the plot towards the end – certainly. But stupid, as defined in the dictionary – no
Andy Crow
Thatcher was not stupid. And I’m not just showing solidarity here. She was an unfortunate mixture of dogmatism and purposefulness and knew how to resonate with the electorate in a way that the Left has yet to come to terms with.
She was looking for new ways to run the country because Keynes-ism was in some sort of crisis. There was an intellectual policy vacuum at the time and any old crap can get sucked in and unfortunately neo-liberalism was there.
It just so happens that she picked the wrong ideas and they did not work in the long run. We know that now because we’ve had over 30 years of them.
But a lot of people were taken in by von Hayek and Friedman – the philosopher John Gray being one of them (and he was brave enough to recant later).
To be honest all Thatcher did was take the foot off the accelerator of her ‘reforms’ and steered clear of other Tory shibboleths (such as the railways that John Major foolishly dealt with). However, she was sorely tempted by the poll tax which brought her down because I think that she began to believe in her own mythology (and that is related to the danger of being in power itself – not stupidity).
To illustrate the lack of stupidity Andy (and please indulge me here) – Thatcher knew that she had gone too far. She realised and that takes intelligence. That is why SRB came about and that is why even though the Tories would publically slag off the unemployed etc., they would still stump up cash to deal with issues. They made cash available for the ex-mining towns too for example after the big strike. Could you imagine George Osbourne doing that (more about him in a minute). Even if Thatcher would have returned to harder neo-liberal polices I believe that she would have done so more incrementally – a clever way of doing stuff – good or bad.
If you really want to see stupidity fast forward to the Tories of 2010 and their austerity blitzkrieg. Overnight they slashed budgets and spending commitments just 2 years after the most severe upheaval in the global financial system. They then poured it on and took even more money out of the economy. And also enabled us to fall out with our closest trading partners.
Lets name some of them (they’re all men BTW):
Osbourne, Cameron, Mogg, Redwood, Davies, Pickles, Hannan, Fox, Lansley, Hunt, Duncan-Smith, Gove, Grayling, Maude, Letwin and Shapps.
These are the really stupid Tories Andy because they (unlike Thatcher) refuse to see the consequences of their decisions and change the pace or the nature of their policies.
The Tories under May (a woman) and Hammond have taken the foot of the pedal with the LHA rates for under 35s. Its not much but it is something. The men above do not think like that and are truly effing stupid.
Pilgrim,
you will have to try harder than that to convince me Thatcher was not stupid, and I really can’t imagine why you would think it a worthwhile exercise.
As to these others you list amongst the current crop of whom you say “These are the really stupid Tories Andy because they (unlike Thatcher) refuse to see the consequences of their decisions and change the pace or the nature of their policies.”
I don’t regard them as stupid at all. They know exactly what they are doing.
I am not sure how useful this debate now is
Possibly not at all useful.
If it has any utility at all it lies in questioning ‘received wisdom’.
I frequently pick-up the old canard that the ‘Winter of Discontent’ was all the fault of the Trades Unions and therefore anything that diminished their power was a good thing. To a generation this is regarded as ‘historical fact’. The Labour Party never effectively challenged it, in the same way after 2008 The LP never really challenged the casual assertion that it was new Labour that crashed the economy.
If we don’t know where we’ve come from it’s difficult to know where we are and if we don’t know where we are it is difficult to navigate from that position.
I’m not trying to ‘convince’ anyone of anything.
People come here to exchange their views – opposing or otherwise – any real change takes place from Richard’s campaigning and networking. It’s just a blog (although it can ferment new ideas and approaches in that campaigning).
To sum up though, there is only one thing worse than a stupid politician and that that is a group of stupid politicians in a hurry. And that is the Tory party from 2010 onwards. They are so stupid that they do not even understand the more subtle workings of the thing they say they follow: Thatcherism.