"Life expectancy is now 77.9 years for men and 82 years for women but in poor areas it falls to 75.8 and 80.4 years.
The NAO says this means that from 1995-97 to 2006-08 the life expectancy gap grew by 7% for men and 14% for women."
According to a story on the BBC today.
The Liberal-Tory argument for raising the Pension age has been that we are all living longer. Clearly, we are not ALL living longer, these figures show that in health as with everything else, we are clearly not "all in this together." In fact, if the average figure is 77.9 for men, falling to 75.8 in poorer areas, then in richer areas the figure must be higher than 77.9, and likewise for women.
The Liberal-Tories say they are for fairness. What these figures demonstrate is that if the Tories want to use their argument about people living longer being the reason for needing to increase the Pension Age - which is a crock because in fact labour productivity has increased by way more than would be necessary to cover even a reduced pension age let alone keeping it the same - then in the interests of fairness they should introduce a variable Pension Age based on how poor, or well-off you are. The poorer you are, the earlier you should be able to access your full Pension, the richer you are the longer you should have to work before you can get it!
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