Hot topic: Will you live longer than your parents… or not?

Not long ago, it was taken as a given that we’d live longer than our parents – just as most of them lived longer and healthier lives than their own. 

But something strange has happened in the last 15 years or so. 

Increases in life expectancy have stalled, and there are signs it might even have started to fall. 

Despite the numerous drugs that have become available to stymie cancer, and revolutionary interventions to stop us dying from cardiovascular disease, life extension seems to have ground to a halt. 

What is going on? Is it just a blip? Or have we reached ‘peak longevity’ already? 

First: the (grim) statistics. 

Figures released by England and Wales’s Office for National Statistics in December 2024 showed babies born between 2021 and 2023 have a shorter life expectancy than those born in the three years before the pandemic.  

Baby boys born between 2021 and 2023 can expect to have lives that are six months shorter than those born between 2017 and 2019, while for baby girls, life expectancy dropped by three months over the same time frame.  

Are we fretting over nothing? After all, we are talking about a hypothetical drop in expected life spans of a few months, in children who are not even in school yet. This could be the life expectancy equivalent of a stock market wobble. 

But it is important to bear in mind just how unthinkable most demographers, statisticians and actuaries considered a drop in life expectancy to be, only a few years ago. During the 2010s, when life expectancy was flat-lining, the consensus was that the centuries-old trend of increasing longevity would pick up again soon. After all, it always has before. 

So what’s going on? An optimistic explanation is that this is an unwelcome but temporary side-effect of the Covid pandemic, caused by its direct impact on individual health and the visible strain it has put on the UK’s National Health Service. The NHS is currently struggling with record waiting lists for ‘routine’ care, and choc-a-bloc emergency departments and wards. But once the NHS is sorted out – and it is one of the UK government’s top priorities – things should return to normal. 

They might. However, there’s a concerning counter-argument: that today’s middle-aged are less healthy than their parents were at the same age, and that today’s young people are less healthy than when their parents were in the prime of life. 

If you were to watch a home movie or some old news footage from the 70s or 80s, you would notice that people were thinner. Kids seemed to run around a lot too. 

The evidence that we are becoming less healthy as a society isn’t just anecdotal.  

A worrying study by Oxford University and University College London academics, published in the journal Gerontology last October, found ‘baby-boomers’ – those born in the 20 years starting 1945 – were more likely to be fatter, sicker and weaker by the time they reached their 50s and 60s than their parents’ generation.  

The ‘boomers’ were 50% more likely to have been diagnosed with conditions such as cancer, lung disease, heart problems, diabetes and high cholesterol by that age than those born before World War Two. This might be due in part to better diagnosis. However, they also tended to have a higher body mass index (BMI) and lower grip strength – the latter being an indicator of shorter life expectancy – than their parents did at the same age. This wasn’t just a UK phenomenon: the study looked at health records of more than 100,000 over 50s living in England, Europe and the US. 

Lead author Laura Gimeno, of UCL’s Centre for Longitudinal Studies, described “a generational drift, whereby younger generations tend to have worse health than previous generations at the same age”. 

Western nations therefore face having to deal not only with ageing populations, but ageing populations of sicker people, increasing demand for health care. This would have “huge implications” for government spending, said Gimeno. 

It is too soon to say if life expectancy has peaked. It may well just be a post-Covid blip.  

And the power of medical invention should not be underestimated. The success of GLP-1 drugs in fighting obesity, and a range of obesity-related diseases, is just one chink of light. 

Anyone working in biotech and pharma cannot be failed to be impressed by the sheer quantity and quality of drugs and inventions that are in the pipeline, which could have a major impact on tackling a range of diseases – keeping us healthier (and alive) for longer. 

But stiff headwinds to increasing life expectancy now exist, which cannot be ignored.