Gulf in rich-poor life expectancy

Via BBC News Online: Gulf in rich-poor life expectancy. Excerpt:

The wide gap in life expectancies between rich and poor persists, with professionals enjoying far longer lives than their low-skilled contemporaries.

A male lawyer can expect to live over seven years longer than the man who empties his wastepaper bin, Office for National Statistics figures suggest.

The government has made the reduction of life expectancy inequalities one of its key health targets for 2010.

But the England and Wales data suggests overcoming differences may be tough.

Male and female non-manual workers - which include professionals as well as clerks - saw the greatest increase in life expectancy in the 33 years covered by the study, stretching from 1972 to 2005.

Men in non-manual jobs could expect to live to 79.2 by 2005, compared to 71.2 in the mid-1970s - a difference of eight years.

By contrast, male manual worker life expectancy increased by 6.8 years over the same period, despite starting from a lower base.

Women non-manual worker life expectancy went up 5.2 years to 82.9, compared to an increase of 4.8 years for manual counterparts, who could expect to live to 80 by 2005.