England's life expectancy rises to 81.3 years: report

Life expectancy in England has risen by 5.4 years since 1990, to 81.3 years, its highest ever level, figures published Tuesday by Public Health England revealed.

The new report also showed men are gradually catching up to women, who traditionally live longer. However, men in England still lag behind, living an average 79.5 years, compared to the lifespan of a woman which is 83.2 years.

The report, published Tuesday in the medical journal Lancet, also revealed that people living in deprived areas, particularly the north east and north west regions of England, are still likely to die years earlier than their fellow Britons living in more affluent parts of the country.

The increased lifespan has resulted from a slowdown over the past 20 years in the number of deaths from heart diseases, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. But poor diet and smoking remain the biggest risks for premature death.

Public Health England said the results demonstrate the nation's potential to have the lowest total disease burden (years of life lost to death and living with disability) in the world.

The rise in life expectancy between 1990 and 2013 was one of the biggest increases compared with the 15 wealthiest European countries, as well as the United States, Canada, Norway and Australia.

The wealthiest region of England, the south east, has the lowest disease burden compared to those 19 high-income countries, said PHE.

Professor John Newton, chief knowledge officer at Public Health England, said: "The findings show the huge opportunity for preventive public health. If levels of health in the worst performing regions in England matched the best performing ones, England would have one of the lowest burdens of disease of any developed country."

Dr. Adam Briggs from the University of Oxford who co-authored the study said: "Life expectancy is increasing across the country but large inequalities still remain. Life expectancy in 2013 for those living in the most deprived areas was still lower than those in less deprived areas enjoyed in 1990. How deprived you are is the key driver of these differences rather than where you live and therefore deprivation and its causes need to be tackled wherever they occur."

Calling for an intensive health-promotion campaign, the PHE report concluded that improvements in life expectancy, however, haven't been matched by improvements in levels of ill-health.

"As a population we're living longer but spending more years in ill-health, often with a combination of conditions, some of which would have previously been fatal," the report added. Endit