The worsening health of the British people is holding back economic growth for the first time since the Industrial Revolution after years of underinvestment in services, Andy Haldane has warned.
The chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) said more than a century of progress on health and wellbeing was going into reverse, with a direct impact on the economy and the cost of living emergency.
“We’re in a situation for the first time, probably since the Industrial Revolution, where health and wellbeing are in retreat,” he said.
“Having been an accelerator of wellbeing for the last 200 years, health is now serving as a brake in the rise of growth and wellbeing of our citizens.”
Speaking at the Health Foundation thinktank’s annual REAL Challenge lecture, Haldane said the economy was being held back after a sharp fall in the number of people in the British workforce since the onset of the Covid pandemic.
However, the…
