Chaired by Dr Katherine Keenan
Keynote by Professor Gerry McCartney, University of Glasgow
Outside times of war or pandemic, life expectancy in the UK has consistently improved since 1850. Yet, after around 2012, average life expectancy stopped improving, and actually started to decline in the fifth of the population living in the most deprived areas. This change in trend pre-dated the Covid-19 pandemic, but has been exacerbated by it, and by the subsequent rise in inflation. In this presentation I will tell the story of why life expectancy trends changed, how this has caused excess mortality far in excess of that caused by the pandemic, and will show the evidence for the pivotal role of austerity policies in causing these changes in the UK and other in other high-income countries. I then go onto discuss what the policy responses to these changes in life expectancy trends was, and propose potential reasons why this has been so little remarked upon in public and policy spheres. Finally, I will make the case that this is, in the words of Engels, an example of Social Murder.
Speaker Biography
Gerry McCartney is Professor of Wellbeing Economy at the University of Glasgow, and honorary consultant in public health at Public Health Scotland and NHS Grampian. He originally trained in medicine and was a GP in Paisley for a time before retraining in public health. He ran the Scottish Public Health Observatory team at NHS Health Scotland and then Public Health Scotland between 2010 and 2021, leading research programmes on health inequalities, excess mortality in Scotland and Glasgow (aka ‘The Scottish/Glasgow Effect’), the inter-relationships between power and class structures and health, and then on the causes of the changed trends in life expectancy trends. He also has degrees in Economics and Development (University of London), Public Health (MPH and MD), and a PhD from the Adam Smith Business School on the role of political economy and austerity on population health for which he received the ASBS prize for excellence).