Healthy life expectancy in the UK – the years we can expect to live in good health – has fallen by more than two years over the past decade, according to a new Health Foundation analysis. The decline has been larger for women than for men, raising concerns about worsening women's health. Among 21 high-income countries, the UK has dropped from 14th to 20th place on this measure, with only the US ranking lower.
Deprivation Gap Widens
The gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas of England now stands at 20.3 years for women. A girl born today in Hartlepool can expect just 51.2 years of good health, while in Richmond-upon-Thames it is 70.3 years. This translates to roughly three decades of poor health for women in the poorest areas, compared to around 13 years for the most affluent. In Wales, female healthy life expectancy fell by 3.7 years over the decade alone.
Why Women Are Disproportionately Affected
Three factors compound disproportionately for women. First, unpaid care: women are 29% more likely than men to be unpaid carers and almost twice as likely to provide 35 hours or more of unpaid care per week. 42% of carers report physical health deterioration, and 74% report stress and anxiety. Caring falls heavily on low-income women whose paid work is already physically demanding.
Second, the labour market: 78% of social care staff are women, and women make up around 59% of minimum-wage workers, concentrated in care, cleaning, hospitality, and retail. These sectors often involve shift work, zero-hour contracts, physically demanding tasks, and exposure to violence, with limited sick pay or flexibility when long-term illness arises.
Third, diagnostic delay and dismissal: women in the UK wait an average of nine years for an endometriosis diagnosis, and the gynaecology waiting list nears a quarter of a million. Women's pain is more likely to be dismissed as anxiety, and only 2% of UK health research funding goes to reproductive health and childbirth, despite maternal mortality at its highest in 20 years.
Women's Health Strategy Under Scrutiny
Health Secretary Wes Streeting's renewed women's health strategy, launched on April 15, pledges to end medical misogyny and gaslighting. However, it includes only £5 million of additional investment, compared to £8 million in the men's health strategy from November. The £1 million for menstrual education in schools equates to roughly £300 per state secondary school, or about two hours of workshops per year. The £5 million for a maternity care bundle averages £42,000 per trust, roughly one midwife's salary. The £2.6 million for osteoporosis scanners buys about 33 machines, two-thirds replacing outdated ones. No ring-fenced funding for gynaecology addresses the unprecedented backlog.
Policy Response Needed
Healthy life expectancy reflects cumulative conditions in which women grow up, work, give birth, and age. The decline since 2012 correlates with a decade of austerity, rising child poverty, and stagnant real wages, hitting hardest those already doing most unpaid work. A serious response would ring-fence women's health funding, match rhetoric with sustained investment in gynaecology, maternity, and reproductive research, and address upstream causes beyond the NHS. The Health Foundation calls this a watershed; it will become one only if policy matches the problem's scale.
Philip Broadbent, Wellcome Multimorbidity PhD Fellow & Public Health Registrar, University of Glasgow. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
