According to the Office of National Statistics in a report published on Monday, white people born in the UK in the period covered: 2011-2014 had a lower life expectancy than all other ethnic groups. Black African women, for instance, had a life expectancy of 88.9 years; for Asian (other: excluding Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi) men the figure was 84.5 years. For white women life expectancy was 83.1 years, for men 79.7 years. You can download the data here.
Which leads me to wonder whether, in this post-binary world, I could identify as a black African woman and live for an extra nine years. And what would I do with those years?
Three questions:
1. Are there cultural reasons which I have ignored? Probably.
2. Am I trivialising a number of issues in an offensive way? I hope not, but maybe.
3. Why am I blogging only 164 words when there is so much else to write about? You're right, I could just have tweeted.
Had a look and couldn’t find the breakdown by ethnicity. But it’s very clear that it’s class that is the big driver of life expectancy and the incidence of chronic disease in old age. No surprises there.
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