London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

A team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has, for the first time, brought together worldwide research on personal needs for healthy living in older age and identified the minimum personal income thus required in England today. They found that some over 65s are not spending enough to enable them to stay fit and well.

The researchers found that a single person over 65, living independently in the community and without a significant disability, needs a minimum of £122.70 a week to live healthily, while a couple required £192.60. These figures include food, the costs associated with exercise (such as entry to swimming baths), housing maintenance and repair costs, dental and eye care costs, and membership costs of social clubs and the like (but not rent or council tax payments).

They calculated that the over 65s need to spend £32.30 on average on food to assure a healthy diet in order to stay healthy, but that those in the lowest 40% of income are only spending £23.40. Another worrying finding was that although older people can exercise for as little as £2.10 a week, over 90% of over 75s are not meeting international guidelines of half an hour of moderate intensity exercise at least five days a week.

There are close on 8 million people aged 65 and over in the UK. The proportion of people in the UK aged 85 plus increased from 0.7% in 1961 to 1.9% in 2002 and is projected to rise to 3.8% in 2031.

The findings put pressure on the Government to tackle pensioner poverty and promote healthy living in later life. The White Paper, Choosing health: making healthier choices easier, aims to tackle problems of poor health by making it easier for people to lead healthy lifestyles. The report's chairman, Professor Jerry Morris of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, comments: 'While we are being urged to make healthy choices in the way we lead our lives, older people on government minimum fixed incomes are, on the team's analysis, not able to meet these minimum costs for a healthy life.

'The Government should ensure that all older people can afford to live healthy lives and so remove this cause of the inequalities that blight the nation's health'.

Gordon Lishman, Director General of Age Concern, which substantially funded the research, comments: 'While younger generations are increasingly encouraged to lead healthier lifestyles, the health needs of older people have been routinely overlooked.

'Inadequate income clearly has a major impact on the health of the nation's people later in life, but urgent action to tackle barriers, such as poor health awareness … is also needed'.