IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/uaajxx/v25y2021is1ps545-s565.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Investigation into Inequalities in Adult Lifespan

Author

Listed:
  • Les Mayhew
  • David Smith

Abstract

People in the United Kingdom are living longer than ever but the gap between the shortest and longest lived appears to be increasing. Based on data from the Human Mortality Database, we measure the differences in age between the first 10% of adult deaths and the top 5% of survivors. We find that in the period from 1879 to 1939 this gap steadily closed. We cite evidence that the reduction in inequalities in age at death was due to significant improvements in the health and condition of the population through better housing, sanitation, mass vaccination, occupational health, clearer air, and other public health improvements that disproportionately improved the lives of the poorest in society relative to the wealthiest. Although life expectancy continued to rise after 1950, the inequality gap remained roughly constant and in recent years has started to widen again—more so for men than for women. A key difference between pre-1939 and now is that deaths are much more likely to be from chronic rather than infectious diseases or environmental causes. Since chronic disease is often attributable to life choices such as smoking and diet, we maintain that the blame for the widening must be laid increasingly at the door of individual lifestyles rather than ambient risks and hazards.

Suggested Citation

  • Les Mayhew & David Smith, 2021. "An Investigation into Inequalities in Adult Lifespan," North American Actuarial Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(S1), pages 545-565, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:uaajxx:v:25:y:2021:i:s1:p:s545-s565
    DOI: 10.1080/10920277.2019.1671874
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10920277.2019.1671874
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10920277.2019.1671874?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Blake, David & Cairns, Andrew J.G., 2021. "Longevity risk and capital markets: The 2019-20 update," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 395-439.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:uaajxx:v:25:y:2021:i:s1:p:s545-s565. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/uaaj .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.