It seems that life expectancy for Mr Average has risen by as much as five years in the past 12 years or so. This is brilliant news for the men, but there s a sting in the tail. No longer can women claim that a more sensible attitude to a healthy lifestyle has put them way ahead in life expectancy stakes. It may not be true for very much longer. This could potentially mean that men could eventually overhaul women in the life expectancy stakes.
These figures are concerning life insurance companies as they grow more and more worried regarding ones referring to female mortality rates as it seems that the growth rate for female life expectancy has virtually reached a standstill. A representative of one of the main life insurance companies stated that although looking at the figures over the last 5 years, it first appeared like a blip, they now see it as start of a trend, and consider it the biggest issue in life insurance at present.
Men living longer will obviously result in greatly increased costs to pension providers, which will be millions of pounds in the long term. Therefore the implications for the insurance industry are enormous. There was a study published in an insurance industry publication which confirmed the view of the industry in that in time, as the length of time between retirement and death grows longer, then the pensions being claimed will need increased funding. This has implications for more than the insurance industry, as most of us will be paying into pension funds, be they state or private schemes and some of us have both. Recent discussions re the raising of pension ages will obviously make a difference to the figures being toyed with.
The reasons for this life expectancy increase would seem to be due to changes in lifestyle, particularly in respect to younger women. Recent television programmes feature the behaviour of young women, showing that the numbers that smoke, drink to excess and generally behave like ladettes are rising fast. Binge drinking was once almost entirely the domain of younger males but women seem to be taking the lead and leading very much less healthy lifestyles. The consumption of alcohol by females has doubled over the past 20 years. It s a fact that figures show that whilst 7 per cent of women owned up to drinking more than safe guidelines in 1987, by 2000, the number was more than 17 per cent. Government guidelines and advice seem to have been largely ignored by this group of people.
Cancer Research broadly agrees with these atrocious figures and say there are serious health and social repercussions. Going back some thirty years, twice as many men as women were smokers. It seems that women have now caught up and the figures are virtually the same. All this evidence adds up to the fact that millions of females, particularly younger ones, really need to stop and think about their lifestyles in general and hopefully will consider making a change in their drinking and smoking habits.
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