The “outrage of austerity” profiled in new article
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 19th February 2025
The authors of a new book that explores the impact of austerity in Britain have written a guest blog for CHEX outlining the disastrous effects these policies have had on life expectancy in the UK.
David Walsh and Gerry McCartney, authors of “Social Murder? Austerity and Life Expectancy in the UK” set out how, throughout recent history, people living longer lives reflected broader societal progress around working and housing conditions, vaccinations, medical advances and more.
This improvement stops in 2010, where evidence shows that across all four nations of the UK, people stopped living longer; they started dying younger. A reversal of more than a century’s improvement.
The evidence, presented and discussed in the new book, shows very clearly that this was principally the result of UK government policies which cut government funding on a massive scale: austerity. Vital local services that people depend on for support were slashed.
The result is tens of billions cut from the annual social security bills, massively increased child poverty, and eleven million people in the UK being classed as ‘food insecure’. And, most damning, people dying. Research shows that more people have died as a result of austerity policies than from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“At this point, it is simply not enough to be outraged”, the authors conclude, “we also need to be active. To be motivated by shared anger to organise, campaign and protest. We hope that the evidence we have collated can help inform and drive community organisations to action.”
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