Public Health Annual Report 2026 - The state of men's health in Cumberland

This chapter lays out the picture of men's health in Cumberland.

As is typical in other areas, nationally and internationally, health outcomes of men in Cumberland are not equal across the population. Certain groups face persistently worse health, earlier deaths, less years of life in good health and higher levels of unmet need. Patterns in health outcomes can be seen in deprivation, geography, ethnicity, education and other socioeconomic factors. When people face multiple forms of disadvantage, these patterns of poor health outcomes are amplified.

Demographics and life expectancy

Cumberland has a population of 280,495 (2024), 49.2% of whom are male. There are nearly double the number of females aged 90 and over compared with males (1,961 females, compared with 1,009 males). The population pyramid for Cumberland in 2021 (Figure 3) shows markedly higher proportions of females emerging aged 75 years, while higher proportions of males are seen from birth to 34 years.

In 2022 to 2024 men born in Cumberland had a life expectancy of 77.8 years, while men aged 65 had a life expectancy of 83.6 years. This is respectively 1.7 years and 0.3 years less than the average male in England (source: ONS). A boy born in Cumberland today can expect to live for 3.9 years less than a girl, and a man aged 65 currently can expect to live on average 2 years less than a woman.

Out of the 380 areas across the United Kingdom, Cumberland had the 84th lowest life expectancy for boys at birth in 2022-24, matching life expectancies of boys born in County Durham and Fenland in Cambridgeshire. While Cumberland sits in the fourth most deprived decile of local authorities, both Country Durham and Fenland are in the second most deprived deciles in England (source: gov.uk). This indicates that in terms of life expectancy Cumberland is doing worse than would be expected given our level of deprivation, prompting the question of what is causing this discrepancy.

Life expectancy and deprivation

Figure 4 and Figure 5 show life expectancy for males and females between 2011 to 2013 and 2021 to 2023. While women’s life expectancy has plateaued, life expectancy in the most deprived groups of men in Cumberland has dropped. This widens both the gap in life expectancy between the most and least deprived individuals in Cumberland, and between men and women.

Deprivation is not equally distributed throughout Cumberland. In Figure 6 we can see clusters of deprivation in Carlisle and the coastal areas of Maryport, Workington and Whitehaven. Throughout England it is recognised that coastal areas have some of the poorest health outcomes, with geographical barriers to services, more limited transport and communities historically more likely to have been created around single industries, resulting in less resilience to changing tourism and employment patterns (source: CMO report 2021, gov.uk).

Causes of differences in male life expectancy in Cumberland

The gap in average life expectancy between men in Cumberland and England has increased, mostly due to cancer, respiratory and external causes (Figure 7). The biggest contributor to the life expectancy gap at 54.8% is external causes. External causes consist of deaths from injury, poisoning and suicide, while the mental and behavioural category covers deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. This chart highlights the importance of preventing deaths due to suicide, injury and poisoning as key in reducing the inequalities in Cumberland.

The gap in life expectancy between the most and least deprived groups of men in Cumberland increased during the COVID-19 pandemic to 9.7 years and then decreased afterwards, to 8.6 years in 2022-23, how this remains higher than the pre-pandemic gap of 7.3 years. Between 2017-19 and 2022-23 the lead contributing cause has shifted from circulatory causes to external causes from suicide, poisoning and injury, explaining 31.1% of the gap. Circulatory causes remain a leading cause of the gap at 20.4%.

Healthy life expectancy

Healthy life expectancy has been declining for both men and women in Cumberland since 2018. While a drop has also been seen on a national level, the decrease in healthy life expectancy is dropping more steeply in Cumberland. In the most recent data, 2021 to 2023, women in Cumberland lived around one year extra in good health than men.