Strictly life expectancy has been falling recently, and at this point in the year, the standardised rate of mortality in 2023 is higher than it was in 2019.
To some extent, that reduction in life expectancy should result in less money needing to be set aside in budgets for the pensions for the future.
Clearly it doesn't change the extra costs resulting from pension increases.
A lot of life expectancy is down to better chances of childhood survival rates rather than people living much longer (although the latter is clearly a factor too).
As such it may be other factors (for example less active lifestyle) which could be down to the shift downwards - as it's not uncommon for life expectancy to be quoted for children being born now rather than for what the average age of death in this year will be.
It takes too long, it increases the problems of house prices and care costs for children and elderly parents. It's not popular with the pensioner voting bloc, because the policy requires diverting funding from those who have five spare rooms to those that can't afford a second bedroom for their child.
A lot of the issue with housing is down to falling household sizes. A retired couple will often occupy the same house as they did when their (say) three children were at home.
Repeat that enough and you find a lot of people with kids squeezed into the smaller houses and people without them rattling around in larger homes.
Continue that for long enough and people look around and see little prospect of having a decent family home so limit the number of children that they have.
Much of the issue is building the wrong sorts of dwellings.
For example my grandmother downsized to her flat because it had decent sized rooms that could accommodate the furniture from her large detached house without having to replace it.
However house builders don't necessarily want to build those sorts of flats, even though they are ideal for people to downsize to (they are often cheaper than bungalows, are much cheaper to heat, don't have large gardens to maintain, don't have the stigma/complications of an over 50's complex and so on).
I've often thought that there's a need to reconsider there types of dwellings we are building rather than repeating designs from the 80's just with more ensuites and more open plan living.
Whilst there's been a noticeable shift towards 3 storey houses and flats, their layouts may need to be looked at to see if there's a better way.
For example, building the high quality spacious flats on the ground floor or building each storey smaller than the one below to provide better outside provision or even building a 3 storey building but with a house built on top of a bungalow (both having a garden, but the bungalow not needing it to be as large as often is the case - and the potential high cost of having to pay someone to maintain it when that becomes too hard for the individual).
Given the land and infrastructure costs are the significant elements of building costs creating higher density living without compromising on the living and outside spaces could actually be a useful way to go, as it could help with keeping the costs of those dwellings down.
