On the go: There are huge differences in life expectancy in the UK, even across neighbouring postcodes, data specialist CACI has found.
In inner London, the average life expectancy is 86 years, yet from borough to borough this can vary by almost 20 per cent – from as little as 80 years in some parts of Southwark and Lewisham to almost 95 years in areas of Camden and Westminster.
The average life expectancy for a person at 65 in the UK is 85.6 years, with women expected to live for 86.9 years and men for 84.3 years.
CACI’s new ‘Longevity Acorn’ research divides life expectancy in 16 different categories for British men and women, drilling down to postcode level.
While statistical sources on mortality, such as the Office for National Statistics, analyse variations in life expectancy at national, country or local authority level in the UK, CACI’s analysis, based on over one million records and three years’ worth of data, analyses life expectancy at a more granular level.
Longevity Acorn’s categories range from ‘16’ (89.9 years on average) to ‘1’ (average of 81.2 years).
An example of this is local authority Allerdale (Cumbria), which has an overall life expectancy of around 85.2 years (category 8).
However, in postcodes like CA12 4AT, located within the Allerdale area, neighbouring residents are expected to reach 89.9 years (category 16).
In the local authority East Dunbartonshire in Scotland, people on average reach 85.9 years (category 10), but single postcodes within the East Dunbartonshire area, such as G61 3LR, are again in the highest category ‘16’ with 89.9 years.
Cardiff has an average population living in a ‘category 7’ postcode expected to live to 84.7 years ,while cities like Manchester and Glasgow are skewed towards the lower categories of CACI’s Longevity Acorn data set, as a large part of their population lives in ‘category 1 to 4’ postcodes.
In collaboration with Hymans Robertson, CACI has also overlaid the new data findings with its existing Acorn location insight, to complement the information with factors such as income and level of education.
Kandyce Tester, vice president at CACI, said: “With the UK population ageing, the insurance and pensions sectors are crying out for a more granular and analytical approach to the data they use in their modelling.”
