Young girls living in a village in Cumbria can expect to reach the grand old age of 97, while boys from a small part of Berkshire will probably celebrate their 90th birthday, a national study suggests.
Figures published on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics reveal the areas of Britain where children born between 2009 and 2013 can expect to have the longest life expectancy.
The analysis by suburb and village showed the dramatic effects in recent decades of better diets, more active lifestyles and declining risks at work.
The long life expectancy of residents in wealthy areas contrasts with typical projected lifespans more than three decades shorter in some of the country’s poorest and most deprived districts
Figures published on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics reveal the areas of Britain where children born between 2009 and 2013 can expect to have the longest life expectancy
Increases in life expectancy for the overall population have been racing ahead since the Second World War,
Wednesday’s breakdown showed that in one district, Warfield Harvest Ride in Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, a boy can expect to reach 90.3 years, up from 89.5 years at the previous count. Girls born around Great Corby and Geltsdale near Carlisle in Cumbria are likely to achieve a typical age of 97.2 years.
Both areas count among the most desirable places to live in Britain.
Warfield is a wealthy suburb of just over 3,000 homes, with nearly 80 per cent of the adult population in jobs. Six out of ten of the working population are high earners in managerial or professional jobs. Eight out of ten children raised there achieve good GCSE grades.
Great Corby and Geltsdale is a district of just over 800 homes on the east bank of the River Eden in one of Britain’s most beautiful areas.
The typical life expectancy for a man in England did not reach 70 until 1977. But a recent report revealed that the long life expectancy of residents in wealthy areas contrasts with typical projected lifespans more than three decades shorter in some of the country’s poorest and most deprived districts.
Typically these are areas which combine high levels of joblessness and benefit dependency with high levels of smoking and alcohol and drug consumption.
Among the worst is the Bloomfield area of Blackpool, where men can expect to live for just 68.2 years – just over three-quarters of the life expectancy in Warfield.
For women, the shortest life expectancy found in England and Wales is 72.6 years, in the Gwersyllt West district of Wrexham.
The ONS based its results on figures gathered across the country in the 2011 census.
Increases in life expectancy for the overall population have been racing ahead since the Second World War, pushed up by improved medicine and healthcare, better diet and easier living conditions, the decline of smoking, and the replacement of dangerous, heavy industrial jobs with comfortable office employment.
However improvements have slowed over the past few years, particularly among women.
Some academics, led by former government adviser Sir Michael Marmot, have suggested that austerity policies have hurt the poor in recent years.
A study last month, led by former ONS chief Dame Karen Dunnell, concluded: ‘Income deprivation, as estimated from state benefits and largely associated with unemployment, is the strongest independent predictor of mortality rates in a neighbourhood.’
The ONS itself has pointed to a fall-off in medical advances, and the re-emergence, especially among poorer immigrant families, of diseases that were once thought to have been conquered, like tuberculosis, rickets and scarlet fever.
The ONS also said that ‘increases in anti-microbial resistance’ – the spread of infections that are hard to treat with antibiotics – may also have had an effect.