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I’m not sure people on my side of the Atlantic fully appreciate quite how much better off the average American is than the average European. A car-wash manager in Alabama can now earn $125,000, about 50 per cent more than the head of cyber security at the UK Treasury even after accounting for different living costs. And this isn’t just another reflection of British stagnation — from the middle of the income distribution upwards, US households have streaked ahead of every country in the developed world over the past decade. Such a sustained boom in spending power might, you would imagine, be accompanied by improvements in other indicators of prosperity. Longer and healthier lives, for example. But the two trends are moving in opposite directions. That the US has a poor record on life expectancy is nothing new.

For the best part of a decade, American lives have grown progressively shorter relative to peer countries. But beneath the surface, several striking details demand our attention and an urgent effort to reverse the trend. American life expectancy compares extremely unfavourably with the UK. The English seaside town of Blackpool has been synonymous with deep-rooted social decline for much of the past decade. It has England’s lowest life expectancy, highest rates of relationship breakdown and some of the highest rates of antidepressant prescribing. But as of 2019, that health-adjusted life expectancy of 65 (the number of years someone can be expected to live without a disability) was the same as the average for the entire US. Chart showing that the average American now has the same chance of a long and healthy life as someone born in Blackpool, the town with England’s lowest life expectancy.

This means that the average American has the same chance of a long and healthy life as someone born in the most deprived town in England. If you then explore how life expectancy varies across the income distribution in both countries, the results are not pretty. This is especially alarming when you consider that the UK is far from top of the class when it comes to life expectancy in Europe. While Americans and Britons living in the richest neighbourhoods of their respective countries have similar, high life expectancies, at the bottom end it’s a different story. People born in the very poorest pockets of Blackpool are expected to live fully five years more than the poorest in the US.

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