4.2.2 - Life Expectancy, Ageing, Migration and Globalisation

Longer lives, unequal life chances

Life expectancy in the UK rose substantially across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A dated life table is needed for a precise figure for a particular period, nation and sex. Sociologists are interested not only in that rise itself, but in what it reveals about social change. Longer lives reflect improvements in food supply, sanitation, medicine, housing, and welfare, so demographic change is tied to social organisation rather than biology alone.

McKeown — Argued that the long-term fall in death rates was driven mainly by improved nutrition rather than medicine alone. His argument matters because it shifts attention from doctors and hospitals to wider living conditions.

Other factors also help explain the increase in life expectancy: better public health measures such as cleaner water and less pollution, the spread of vaccination and antibiotics, safer housing, the welfare state, and health education around smoking, diet, and exercise. A sociological reading therefore treats longer life as the outcome of social policy, economic development, and collective provision.

However, longer life is not distributed equally. Women have usually lived longer than men, though the gap has narrowed. More importantly for sociology, class inequalities remain strong. Evidence such as the Marmot Review shows that people in more deprived areas still tend to die younger than those in affluent areas. This means life expectancy is also a measure of inequality in life chances. When governments raise the pension age, for example, the policy does not affect all classes in the same way because working-class people often have shorter and less healthy later lives.

The ageing population and the politics of care

An ageing population means that the average age of the population is rising and that a larger share of people are in older age groups. This has happened because people live longer while birth rates have generally fallen. The result is a changing balance between those in paid work and those more likely to rely on pensions, healthcare, or care from relatives.

Some older people remain employed or provide care, and some working-age adults are not earners. The age-based ratio therefore signals potential pressures rather than measuring the exact number of workers supporting others.

One consequence is pressure on the dependency ratio. If there are proportionally fewer workers and more older people, governments may face higher spending on pensions, healthcare, and social care. Hirsch highlights the policy problem here: an ageing society raises difficult questions about how pensions and care should be funded and who should carry the costs.

For families, the effects are very immediate. Brannen (2003) — Used the idea of the beanpole family to describe families that are longer and thinner: more generations are alive at once, but there are fewer people in each generation. This can strengthen intergenerational ties, but it can also concentrate caring responsibilities on a smaller number of relatives.

The sandwich generation is a clear example. Middle-aged adults may support children or grandchildren while also caring for ageing parents. Feminists point out that this burden of care still falls disproportionately on women, especially daughters and daughters-in-law, so demographic change can reproduce gender inequality inside the family even when it appears to be a neutral population trend.

Older people may also face ageism, exclusion, and assumptions that dependency is natural. Townsend (1981) — Argued that much old-age dependency is structured by society. Low pensions, compulsory retirement, poor housing, and weak support services can make older people dependent; the problem is therefore social organisation, not simply biological ageing. This is a strong AO3 point because it challenges the idea that an ageing population is automatically a crisis caused by older people themselves.

Migration, globalisation and family diversity

Migration has also reshaped UK demography since 1900. The UK experienced major post-war Commonwealth migration, later immigration linked to European free movement, and more recent shifts in migration patterns after Brexit. At the same time, many people have emigrated from the UK, so sociologists often look at net migration: the balance between immigration and emigration.