A new report from the UCL Institute of Health Equity (IHE) has confirmed that a million people in 90% of areas in England lived shorter lives than they should between 2011 and the start of the pandemic.
Using several published ONS data sources, the IHE made these calculations from the number of excess deaths (the increase in the number of deaths beyond that would be expected) in the decade from 2011 in England.
The report finds that of the one million people who died prematurely, 148,000 of them were additional to what might have been expected if the post-2010 austerity measures hadn’t been imposed. Additionally in 2020, during the pandemic, inequality between the least and most disadvantaged 10% of areas contributed further 28,000 excess deaths, when compared to that over the previous five years.