Life expectancy in Britain for both men and women has fallen by six months compared to last year, figures have revealed.
Statistics from the Institute of Faculty of Actuaries, which calculates life expectancy for pension providers, expects men to live until 86.9 years and women to 89.2 years.
This is a drop from 87.4 years for men and 89.7 years for women in 2017, the projections reveal.
The data, produced annually and widely used to price products linked to life expectancy - like annuities, life cover and pension schemes - and could be a boost to insurers.
A graph showing how life expectancy has fallen in the UK since 2009. It shows in 2009, women were expected to live until they were more than 90-years-old. This has fallen to just over 89 in 2018. For men, the age has dropped from 88.2 to 86.9
The institute declined to speculate on exactly why the forecasts showed lower life expectancy, but experts have pointed to the impact of austerity, cuts to the NHS, and rising rates of dementia, diabetes and obesity.
Tim Gordon, chair of the Mortality Projections Committee for the Continuous Mortality Investigation, a firm owned by the institute and which carried out the study, said: 'It’s now widely accepted that mortality improvements in the general population since 2011 have been much lower than in the earlier part of this century.
'Average mortality improvements between 2000 and 2011 were typically over 2 per cent per year but have since fallen to around 0.5 per cent per year.
'The causes of the slowdown, and whether these current low improvements will persist, remain a subject of considerable debate.'
The institute declined to speculate on exactly why the forecasts showed lower life expectancy, but experts have pointed to the impact of austerity, cuts to the NHS, and rising rates of dementia, diabetes and obesity
The figures show in 2018, men at 65 can expect to live for a further 21.9 years after 65, while women will
