It may be time to move out of Andover, life expectancy figures show - but only if you’re a man.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) regularly complies data on how long each of us can be expected to live, and breaks that down to a local authority level. The most recent figures at a local level, from 2016-2018, predate the Covid pandemic.
For male babies born in Test Valley in the most recent figures, they will live on average for 81 years, which is 73 days less than the Hampshire average.
For women, however, being born in Test Valley adds six months to your life, compared to the county average, with female babies born between 2016 and 2018 expected to live for 84.9 years.
However, both sexes have seen their life expectancies shoot up over the past 15 years, with men now living over three years longer, and women almost two and a half. Across Hampshire, Test Valley has the seventh highest life expectancy out of Hampshire’s eleven local authorities for men, and is fifth for women.
For anyone who hit the retirement age of 65 between 2016 and 2018, it’s a similar situation, with men living for 19.7 years on average after that milestone, up three years from 2003, but below the Hampshire average of 19.9. Women have seen a more modest increase from 20 years in 2003 to 22.6 in 2018, above the average for Hampshire at 22.1.
Overall though, Andover is at least a year above the national average, which is 79.67 for male babies born in 2019, and 83.33 for female babies.
Elsewhere in the county, Hart ranks as the best place to be born for a man, giving a life expectancy just shy of 83 years, while women live longest on average if they’re born in the New Forest, where they can expect an average life of 85.5 years.
It’s worth staying away from Gosport for raising children, with the lowest average life expectancy for male babies at 79.3, while Rushmoor has the lowest average life expectancy for women at 82.7.
Regarding the 2019 national life expectancy figures, Edward Morgan, from the Centre for Ageing and Demography at the ONS, said: "The improvements in life expectancy at birth for males and females in the UK between 2016 to 2018 and 2017 to 2019, although lower than historical improvements prior to 2011, were the highest annual improvements for 5 years.
"The gap in annual improvements in life expectancy at birth between males and females has been narrowing since 2013 to 2015. In 2017 to 2019, female life expectancy improvements were seen to slightly exceed those for males for the first time since the start of the published data series in 1981 to 1983. However, it is too early to say whether this is a trend that will continue into the future.
"The impact of COVID-19 on period life expectancy will be shown in the National life table for 2018 to 2020 which will be published in Autumn 2021. The National life tables 2017 to 2019 were produced using data up to the end of December 2019, and therefore precede the COVID-19 pandemic."
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