The Guardian
If you live in Manchester, make the most of today - in fact, make the most of every day. Because the statisticians say that you have the lowest life expectancy of anyone in England and Wales. Figures released last week show that if you are a man, you probably won't reach 70 (compare that with Dorset, where men can expect to notch up an average of 79.6 years). If you are a woman, the news is not much better: you will live an average of just 76.3 years (in west Somerset, women can expect to live an extra 7.2 years on top of that).
The statistics suggest that Manchester is not quite such a fun place in which to live - at least not for everybody. The city has the second highest rate of prescriptions for antidepressants in the country. Suicide rates among young men are twice the national average. Some 27 of its 33 wards are among the 10% most deprived in the country. There are still stark pockets of poverty and deprivation on the fringes of the city centre, in areas such as Moss Side, Rusholme and Gorton.
With poverty comes poor diet, smoking and heavy drinking, and all the health problems that go with them: including, of course, early death.
Professor John Ashton, regional director of public health in the north west for the past 10 years, says this is a problem with its roots in the industrial revolution. "In the 1840s there was a huge difference in life expectancy in different parts of the country," he says.
Even then though, he says, the picture was complicated: "[The differences were] partly due to social class but there were [also] big differences between the life expectancy of the gentry in industrial towns, such as Manchester, and in areas like Norwich." Today, even people who are comfortably off in Manchester do not necessarily do as well as their counterparts in other parts of the country.
How could that be? Ashton says low birth weight is a factor. "We have a lot of low-birth-weight babies compared to other Scandinavian countries. Low birth weight is affected by maternal nutrition over a couple of generations." So even if you're a middle-class Mancunian, your life expectancy may have already been affected by the lifestyle of your mother and your grandmother.
He also acknowledges the cultural differences between the north-west and south-east. "It is part of the industrial heritage that people used to go out and have a blast at the end of a week's work - but this has now been incorporated into the lifestyle," he says. "Some people just go out to get bladdered and this is deeply entrenched in the culture. There is a different drinking culture in the north which is quite separate from food."
Dr Wendy Doyle, of the British Dietetic Association, agrees: "We know people in the north eat fewer fruit and vegetables and drink and smoke more.
Despite the wide range of social classes in places such as Manchester, the statistics show that many people are leading unhealthy lifestyles."