Experts have previously blamed Britain’s obesity epidemic and the growing burden of preventable illness on the reduced life expectancy, as well as the excess deaths seen in the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the OECD report, called Health at a Glance: Europe 2024, reveals how the UK has fallen behind peers on the continent, with most other countries having recovered to pre-pandemic levels.
Switzerland leads the way with an average life expectancy of 84.2 years, followed closely by Spain at 84 years and Italy at 83.8 – all about three or more years longer than the UK, which ranked 21st out of 39 countries across Europe.
As well as having shorter life expectancies than the Nordic states, France, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the rest of western Europe, the UK is also lagging behind Malta, Cyprus, Greece and Slovenia.
The lowest life expectancies reported were in Ukraine and Moldova at 73.4 and 73.3 years respectively but this was based on data from 2019. Georgia’s average life expectancy of 73.7 years was the lowest of those using data from 2022 or later.
The analysis found that the average life expectancy across the EU had increased by a year since last year, while the UK’s had increased by six months.
In last year’s OECD report, the researchers compared the UK with countries across the globe, where its 80.4 year average life expectancy put it behind other developed countries including New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea and Israel.
The OECD also found that women’s life expectancy was longer than men’s across all European countries by an average of 5.3 years.