From conference speeches to multimillion-pound funds that have yet to materialize, we can’t stop hearing about “leveling up.” The Conservative government’s flagship policy announced as part of its 2019 manifesto promised to redistribute wealth and jobs away from the capital and combat the widening level of regional inequality that has become an inescapable part of the political discourse — despite no one being entirely sure what it means in practice.

There has, predictably, been little real movement in this direction. Last week came the news that England’s richest are now expected to live a decade longer than the country’s poorest.

The analysis of ONS data by health care think tank The King’s Fund was an indictment of what it called “institutionalized” inequalities in health care and wider society. Take Westminster and Blackpool, the two areas with the biggest divide. Wealthy Westminster saw male life expectancy rise from 77.3 to 84.7 years between 2001–3 and 2018–20 — a rise of 7.4 years. In Blackpool, which has the lowest prosperity rates and was found to be home to eight of the ten most deprived neighborhoods in England, longevity only increased by 2.1 years from 72 to 74.1. That means the life expectancy gap between the two has risen from just over five years to 10.7 years in less than two decades. For women, the same gap had risen from 3.9 to 8.1 years.