Book excerpt: Life expectancy is about more than just health – it’s about the kind of society we live in. And in the early 2010s, after decades of continual improvement, life expectancy in the UK, US and many other rich countries stopped increasing. For millions of people, it actually declined. Despite hundreds of thousands of extra deaths, governments and officials remained silent. Combining robust evidence with real-life stories, this book demonstrates how austerity policies caused this scandal. It argues that this shocking and tragic suffering was predictable, caused by a dereliction of duty from those in power. The book concludes with an optimistic vision of what can be done to restore life expectancy improvements and reduce health inequalities.