The Healthy Ireland policy document entitled Framework for Improved Health and Wellbeing 2013 -2015 is the government’s plan to improve the health and wellbeing of the nation. So how are we faring mid-way through the lifetime of the plan?
The mid-term report entitled Health in Ireland: Key Trends (2017) revealed that 70% of men and 57% of women are overweight or obese. This also reflects the lack of a personal physical exercise regime whereby only 46% of men and 62% of women are termed “physically active”. All of this reflects significantly on our birth to death life expectancy ratio.
Between 2007 and 2017 the following increases in Life Expectancy are recorded:
- Male (2007) 77.3 years – increased by 3.1 years to 80.4 years (2017)
- Female (2007) 82.1 – increased by 1.9 years to 84.0 years (2017)
Interestingly and probably due to lifestyle and societal changes, in the decade from 2007 to 2017 the gap between men and women narrowed from 4.8 years in 2007 to 3.6 years in 2017. Also, worth noting is that at the foundation of the State, the census of 1926 showed the gap between men and women was just 0.4 years with men at 57.5 years and women at 57.9 years.
International Comparisons
The recent United Nations Population Division Estimates in a combination of both sexes provided the following birth to death top 10 rankings
- Hong Kong 85.29
- Japan 85.03
- Macao 84.68
- Switzerland 84.25
- Singapore 84.07
- Italy 84.01
- Spain 83.99
- Australia 83.94
- Channel Islands 83.60
- Iceland 83.52
This review shows Ireland at 18th (82.81) and UK at 29th (81.77)
