Abstract
Last month, Public Health England announced increases in life expectancy. For what it’s worth, men aged 65 years old can expect to live for another 19 years. Women of that age can expect to live a further 21 years. There is regional variation. For example, there is no predicted increase for the North East. Whether people are also living longer healthier lives with compression of morbidity is also debatable.
A different report from Public Health England last year raised concerns that death rates had recently increased for people 85 years old or over. The explanation for these death rates is unclear, especially since there is regional variation in these data too. Might the increase in deaths be linked to austerity? The previous coalition government in England reduced pension credits, which support pensioners on low incomes, and local authorities cut spending on social care in order to meet budget targets.
In this month’s research paper, Rachel Loopstra and colleagues examine the link between austerity measures and old-age mortality. 1 Their findings suggest that budgetary restrictions to incomes of the poorest pensioners increased their vulnerability and risk of death. This is an alarming finding for health professionals concerned about protecting the most vulnerable individuals in society. The authors conclude that with further pressure on social care spending and increasing demand from an ageing population, outcomes for the elderly are likely to worsen.
The authors, however, are open to discussing the potential limitations of their work. The analysis is ecological, they say, and could be vulnerable in its own way to the ecological fallacy. With fortuitous timing, an essay by Catherine Saunders and colleagues delves into the concept of the ecological fallacy and outlines other potential methodological concerns with aggregated data. 2 They helpfully offer simple recommendations for best practice.
Elsewhere, Aula Abbara and the Syria Public Health Network remind us that the scale of displacement caused by the Syria conflict is the largest since the Second World War. One of the greatest areas of neglect and need is mental health. The authors urge donors and humanitarian agencies to develop a coherent response to the mental health challenges facing refugee populations in the Middle East and Europe. 3