Map of the week - how longevity has moved north
I have just stumbled across a new series of animating maps which tell a fascinating tale of how Britain is changing. Using data on life expectancy from 1992 to 2006, some clever people at the Office for National Statistics have illustrated how improving health has migrated northwards.
I have posted the start and finish maps here but I would urge you to look at the animation here for full effect!
The map for men is the clearer in showing the way longevity has crept up the country. The most recent data reveals how parts of Glasgow and the Outer Hebrides still suffer from life expectancy well below the rest of Western Europe, but overall the improvements are clear.
For women, it is broadly the same story with life expectancy moving northwards -although there are pockets in all regions where progress is slower.
Over the 14 years illustrated by the maps, life expectancy has consistently increased, rising from 73.4 years to 77.3 years for men and from 78.9 years to 81.5 years for women.
The largest increases over this period for both sexes have occurred in England and Wales. The smallest increase was in Scotland for males and in Northern Ireland for females.
In 2006 the local area with the highest life expectancy for both males (83.7 years) and females (87.8 years) was Kensington and Chelsea. In contrast, the local area with the lowest life expectancy in 2006 was Glasgow City (70.8 years for males and 77.1 years for females). Between 1992 and 2006 life expectancy within this area has increased by just 2.6 years for males and 2.1 years for females.
It is a startling fact that for every hour you live, your life expectancy increases by 16 minutes.
I was puzzled as to why the Outer Hebrides should have such poor life expectancy, apparently improving for both men and women at different times and then getting worse again. The region doesn't fit with the urban, industrial character of other places which suffer from premature death.
Looking at public health statistics for Scotland, one can see that smoking and excess drinking have a major impact on life expectancy. Is this the story in the Western Isles? Why not the same situation in the Orkney and Shetland Islands?
I would be grateful for any information or theories on that.
I'm 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~39~RS~)
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There seems to be a remarkable correlation between male life expectancy in Northern Ireland and political affiliations. In both the 1992 and 2006 maps the areas with lowest life expectancy match up very closely with the areas that voted for Nationalist parties in the 2007 Assembly election.
You can view an election map on wikipedia here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Northern_Ireland_election_seats_2007.png
Thanks for the map.
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The ONS certainly earn the money they are given, and have always (up to now) told it like it is. Consider the demise of heavy industry and other dangerous jobs like mining, and you have an answer. By '92 the effects of the mine and plant closures would have been taking effect, and the lack of significant improved longevity in the south seems to show this. Apart from the effects of the sustained stop smoking campaign,which was developed, I think, by Robert West using his Prime Theory (see his excellent website). It's amazing how a few drug related deaths in very young people have a skew on the general population. HIV/Aids never took the toll that was expected in the '90's, after another effective public health campaign, among at-risk groups.
I don't have a theory about the Northern Isles though. They have spent fortunes on health and leisure facilities using oil revenue, which should have had a more beneficial effect.
Greater London always has a lot of Immigrants, who's childhood exposure to poor diet, trauma, and disease makes them more susceptible to life threatening illnesses. They've only fairly recently collected ethnicity data, which is helping PCT's and LA's identify more at risk groups, so that should help.
Heavy drinking puts people at all sorts of risks, and I haven't looked recently, but Christine Godfrey's work for the ONS, on drinking by LA should be in there somewhere. I even think they did one of these evolving maps, but it just showed everyone, everywhere drinking more year on year.
The map to lay over this one would be LA spend, and PCT spend.per capita.
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A sharp geospatial observation by maplover09 (as his nickname may have led us to expect!), but it is not on the face of it all that surprising.
Different political parties are often correlated with socio-economic backgrounds, which themselves are connected to life expectancy. So we shouldn't necessarily be surprised to see a correlation between political leaning and life expectancy.
It would be interesting to see how things compared across the rest of the country. (Though I hesitate before suggesting that, because I can see the more scientifically challenged newspapers running headlines like "Vote Tory and Live Longer!" and other such drivel!)
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Those maps are pretty misleading in that they use the same colour to represent different ages for the two sexes. On first glance one might think the black areas represent the same age when in fact there is a 7 year difference between the male and females!!
Pity the bbc has failed to report the scandal of why men die so much sooner than women. You're perfectly happy to report on the gender pay gap (which essentially is a result of women's choices), when surely the question of whether you live or die is a million times more significant anyway?
The maps (even with their misleading colouring) shows just how much we discriminate against men as a society. It shows how men are forced to work 5 years longer than women, how male cancers such as prostate cancers have been neglected in favour of breat cancer, and how the health service as a whole has failed to help men, such as actually having facilities open when men aren't at work.
It shows how we've failed to prevent male suicides and just how men are more likely to be victims of violence than women and how much more dangerous their jobs are (more dangerous job = higher pay).
It really annoys me that the bbc ignore all these facts and somehow pretend only ever women are discriminated against.
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#4 is quite correct and it is particularly disgraceful how little money is spent on research on male cancers compared to breast and ovarian cancer.
However the greater longevity of women is beginning to unroll, and in decades to come the gap will almost certainly narrow significantly.
When I worked in the NHS I was told that some of the higher longevity of women is also related to how often they visit GPs, partly because they take their children there, but also because of "macho" attitudes to illness. Opening GP surgeries longer in the evenings would have a clear benefit to men's health, but don't hold your breath on that.
A little reported fact is that despite the increasing numbers of people living longer and longer - there are now 10 times as many people living to 100 than 50 years ago - the maximum longevity of humans has not increased at all; there is no reliably documented case of anyone living longer than 120, and you would expect such statistical outliers with so many centenarians, nearly 10,000 in the UK alone. So don't expect your grandchildren to live to 140.
This tends to support the observation that increasing average longevity is related to social and economic experience.
The biggest impact on longevity comes from housing conditions, followed by income, although these are clearly linked. Medical improvements such as vaccination have actually accounted for relatively little of the improvement over the last 150 years - sanitation, clean water, warmer and drier houses have been much more important.
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What's the weather like in the Western Isles? Check out this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7616421.stm
If Dr Oliver Gillie is right, and the lack of sunshine is a significant factor, you'd expect the areas with the worst weather to show the effect most. I know the weather in the West of Scotland generally is worse than that in the East, but not sure about the Western Isles cf Orkney and Shetland?
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Here you go, check out the rainfall map, about halfway down the page:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/education/secondary/students/bi_climate.html
I'm thinking the rainfall map is more significant than actual hours of sunshine, say, because rain keeps people indoors so much.
It'd be great if Dr Gillie were right because it'd be so easy to resolve if so.
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It may be that cancer screening is more advanced for women simply because they have been willing to campaign. Getting men organised around regular screenings for prostrate and testicullar cancer etc may be difficult (do you check?) but could work wonders.
I wouldnt say the media, BBC included, have ignored the issue of rising suicide levels amongst young men. I have certainly been aware of it for some years. Use the BBC search facility for young men suicide and there are many results. e.g.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7219232.stm
All people with seroius mental illness tend to die substantially earlier (excluding suicide) than those without. In most countries, not just the UK, many more men than women commit suicide. I think everyone acknowledges that there are major differences in how men and women handle emotional difficulties; it is that which needs changing. Many men simply are unwilling to admit they have a problem, even when it overwhelms them. There are organisations that attempt to address this isssue e.g.
http://www.thecalmzone.net/
As for the Hebredies, without knowing what the major causes of death are, who could hazard a guess?
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The bbc routinely ignores virtually all forms of discrimination against men.
The bbc even dsicriminates themselves - just look at the bbc's help pages on domestic violence for example.
It is so sexist it uses the term "she" / "her" etc to refer to victims even though men suffer from domestic violence almost as much as women.
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You know the BBC have a page dedicated to male victims of domestic violence too?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/relationships/domestic_violence/menhh_index.shtml
`suffer from domestic violence almost as much as women.` I would be interested to see you back that up with some figures. Most figures give around 20% male, 80% women. Even if there is unreported abuse I doubt it is 50/50.
Historically women have generally had a longer life expectancy then men, especially since the late 19th century when medical advances reduced the risk of death during childbirth, previously a major cause of female mortality. In late Victorian times average life expectancy for both sexes was around 40 yrs. Rising life expectancy (and height) over the 20th Century have been due mainly to imporovements in medicine, public healthcare, diet, housing, sanitation, clean water supply, home heating, clean air acts and so on.
Historically, in most western societies, men consumed, on average, more tobacco and alcohol than females. In general, men are more likely to be murdered and men commit more violent crimes. Wars have been fought predominently by male armies and men tend to take more risks than females e.g. reckless driving when young etc. Since the 20th century men in the Western societies have done the bulk of heavy manual jobs. For all the flack aimed at health and safety laws they began in order to safeguard the lives of those in dangerous industries.
I agree, having worked on building sites where H and S was often flouted, that men are exploited in ways damaging to their health and that also resulted in injuries (try unloading and carrying a lorryload of wet sandbags and see how you feel at the end of the day) that the term `exploitation` should be applied to both sexes. But that applies across all media. Personally I also think there should be true equality in retirement age, though I intend working as for long as I can.
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Of course these statistics do not address the matter of quality of life in these extra years we've gained!
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The population of the Western Isles is only about 25,000. That would mean it won't take many deaths to influence average life expectancy.
Obviously you would need to see a break down of the causes of death, to back up any theories. It is a fairly isolated region, so distance from hospital could mean a few people die every year for lack of emergency treatment to injuries. If they were youngish, that could warp the figures significantly.
Orkney and Shetland are both smaller, so perhaps people are closer to hospitals.
Life expectancy is not a perfect indicator of public health.
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"You know the BBC have a page dedicated to male victims of domestic violence too?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/relationships/domestic_violence/menhh_index.shtml"
Sorry but you've totally missed the point.
That is one PAGE for men made as an afterthought - whereas the whole of the main bbc domestic violence SITE is dedicated to women only.
The way we ignore male victims of domestic violence is yet another reasons for the difference in life expectancy.
Oh and you wanted stats? - this home office report shows that men and women suffer domestic violence equally:
[Unsuitable URL link to PDF removed by Moderator]
More recent surveys tend to show women suffering slightly more than men (but not so much so that they should have 300+ shelters and men only 2). Of course it is far harder for men to come forward too so who knows what the true picture is? What we can be certain of is that it certainly isn't a gender issue.
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This is interesting: although, as others have commented, there is a difference of several years between the life expectancies of men and women, the gap is smaller if instead of total life expectancy one looks at healthy-life expectancy.
And whilst both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy are increasing, the former has increased more than the latter ... so we're facing more years of poor health. Nearly eleven years of poor health for the average woman.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=934
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Just what we need, more people living for longer, putting a strain further on our land, environment and economy. Perhaps we can make it a requirement to give birth to at least 3 children before you're 30 too. Life being that crack addicted miracle it is.
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Mark,
I am afraid you are guilty of a pretty awful mis-interpretation of data here! You are using this data to support the idea of northward migration in life expectancy.
However, what the graphic really seems to be illustrating is that the country as a whole is improving in its rate of life expectancy. This is very different from a northward migration (which assumes at best that the south has stagnated, at worst that it has somehow transferred to the north).
Now it may be that the improvement has occurred uniformly across the country, or it could even be that the south has improved more than the north (which would actually contradict your statement). Unfortunately, because the map's representation of life expectancy is on a (3 colour) nominal scale we cannot infer which region has improved the most in terms of actual averages.
If these views are those of the Office for National Statistics I would say we need to hold back on issuing them with their 'clever' badges.
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(general comment)
Your blog postings are insanely data rich, for which you get many geek/science points.
Carry on.
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I am not clear whether or not they have only counted the life expectancy of those who have actually lived from birth to death in these regions. Certainly early 19c figures that have been quoted for over a hundred years were totally misleading in taking just the average age of recorded deaths, at a time of migration. It produced the appalling statistics for Manchester that were very convenient for those campaigning for Municipal Goverment.
One obvious factor that affects us pensioners now is that there are definite attractions for migrating away from- for example- the South East, often "back home" with reasonable pensions and the capital realised by the sale of a house down south. Not everyone wants Spain or other places in the Sun.
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Apart from inward migration of an older population, who have come home to end their days, an increase in longevity based upon the average age of death, would also be achieved by a decline in the number of young deaths. This could be due to a fall in infant mortality- i.e fewer children dying per thousand of the infant population- but it could also be produced by fewer children dying because fewer children are being born. So increased longevity could just be symptomatic of a population that is losing its basic physical vitality.
Of course one would hope that the statistics office would not be manking such schoolperson blunders. But such stupid blunders seem to be part and parcel of our modern style of operating.
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Certainly not drink in the outer Hebrides - they're all v. religious. Here's a thought - if you have a heart attack in mainland UK how long does it take to get to hospital - and how long when you live on an island 100 miles from Inverness? The other poster probably has it right with the population size comment though.
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I have tried to post this five or six times on the appropriate site with no luck.
I am surprised at your sursprise about Britain' s boozy past. In England it goes back to at least the free pints of ale that the Lord supplied to his peasants when they were working his lands. Sweat dehydrates. This tradition was carried on into the mills and factories; and early factory rules laid down permitted quantities that could be sent out for during working hours.
A problem arose, however, as workers-n.b. male- got more access to cash in a money economy. The consumption of the social drugs- alcohol and tobacco- became a major feature of new leisure culture- counterbalanced to some extent for the lucky by the arrival of "tea-time"- not just tea but also jam and preserves. Yet tea-time was often for wives and mothers and their children. The men went out from the crowded house to the pub or club. Keir Hardie saw the result in his own family, and started off as a anti-drink campaigner, before deciding that the working class drug culture was a symptom and not a cause.
It was during the First World War that the government decided that drinking and gambling were undermining the war effort. That was when licensing hours came in; and pitch and toss was made a criminal offence.
The signs are that New Labour policies on drink and gambling have undermined our current national effort.
Your per capita consumption figures, however, mask the fact that in France, for example, the total consumption is spread much more widely throughout the population and throughout the day. It seems that drinking in Britain almost always has to mean selected groups of people going out to "get leggless".
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This needs to be brought to the attention of the pension administrators who did not notice that life expectancy had been improving since the days of Florence Nightingale.
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On the question of healthy life expectancy, readers may be interested in this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7728837.stm
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Typical BBC . Transport house bring in computers to save 85 million , only to lose 125 million, pensions have been overpaid to some for over 30 years and you still have this tossed off map here. Are you really so enamoured of the labour govt that you don,t find this gov, incompetance worth recording. Ah, ah of course we got the news yesterday about Jowell giving you a contract (with more money, of course)until 2030. One hand washes the other(the old mafia saying)
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