110,000 people died in poverty last year, according to a report from end of life charity Marie Curie, with research from Loughborough University. That’s up 19% from 2019 where the dying in poverty figure stood at 93,000.
18% of the total people who died in 2023 did so in poverty. That’s 300 people every day. It’s a ‘cost of dying crisis’, as the charity suggests.
Shocking stats
In fact, working age people are proportionately much more likely to die in poverty than pensioners. 28% of working age people who died did so in poverty, compared to 16% of pensioners. This suggests that inequality is leading to particularly premature death in the UK, where 1% of the population own more wealth than 70% of people.
The charity points out that this difference is likely because the poverty rate among working age people is generally higher at 21.8%, compared to that of over 65s at 13.2%. This disparity is potentially an outcome of how we’ve gone backwards since today’s pensioners earned most their living. That’s through austerity, privatisation of essential services (higher bills) and student debt along with the housing bubble and renting crisis. The Labour Party isn’t committed to delivering the “change” it promised, at present.
It’s also the case that working age people who fall ill can lose their income and the benefits available aren’t as sufficient as a pension.
Further, there are startling differences when it comes to ethnicity and dying in poverty. Compared to 25% of white people between the ages 20 and 64 who died doing so in poverty, it’s 47% of black people and 43% of Asian people. Regional differences are also acute with people in the north more like to die in poverty, for example at 44.5% in Middlesborough and 42.3% in Manchester.
Dying in poverty – an example
The report highlights individual stories such as that of Simona and her late husband David. He died in June 2024 from a stage four glioblastoma, six months after he was diagnosed.
She said:
David had to stop working straight away after his diagnosis, because he couldn’t walk or move. And I had to stop work to be his full-time carer. The amount of money we had through state benefits was barely enough to get us to the end of the month.
His condition meant that he was constantly cold, so we had to keep the heating on all the time. We discussed this with our energy companies, and the only things they provided was an electric blanket and a discount of £200 – it wasn’t enough.
All the medical equipment David needed was electric. It really raised the cost of our energy bills, and I still have an outstanding bill of £5,000 from the energy company.
When David was on oxygen towards the end of his life, I spoke to the provider as the oxygen machine needed to be on all the time. They told me they would refund the cost of running the equipment, and later I had a cheque through the post from them for £13.
Marie Curie’s solutions
Marie Curie argues that providing end of life social security would be a solution to people dying in poverty. The charity is calling on the Labour government to provide pension level welfare for people who have less than a year to live. It’s also calling for a social tariff that halves energy bills for people with a terminal illness. The report calculates this tariff could lift p36 54,000 dying people out of fuel poverty and alleviate it for many more.
Dr Juliet Stone, Research Fellow from the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University, said:
The sharp rise in poverty at the end of life reflects the increasingly difficult financial circumstances faced by low-income households over the past four years.
It is clear that poverty at the end of life cannot be fully tackled without efforts to address poverty more generally, but people in the last year of life face additional obstacles to achieving an adequate standard of living.
Changes to the social security system, especially addressing the inadequacy of state benefits for people working age with a terminal illness, could go some way to reducing the risk of poverty at the end of life.
But there is also a need to address the additional costs that people face when diagnosed with a terminal illness.
We know that disability benefits regularly fall far short of covering these additional costs. But broader policy reform, including improvements to the availability of affordable services, including those related to social care, could help to bridge this gap, and allow for a dignified death without the additional burden of financial hardship.
Featured image via the Independent – YouTube
