Socio-economic impacts

• Every day in the UK, more than 980 people are diagnosed with cancer and more than 440 people die from the disease.
• Incidence rates have increased by 12% since the early 1990s. Because the population is ageing, the number of cancer cases is projected to rise by more than 40% to around 514,000 new cases per year in 2035, with a greater increase in men than women.
• Cancer affects the UK in multiple ways, not always easy to quantify because the effects are both direct and indirect.
• directly - there is the impact of cancer deaths; around 35,000 people of working age die from cancer each year and this removes productive workers from the labour force.
• there are also the consequences of non-fatal cancers: 120,000 people under the age of 65 are diagnosed with cancer each year. These people are likely to leave the labour force for a period, sometime over many months, for treatment and recuperation.
• Many cancer survivors do not return to work because of the after-effects of cancer and cancer treatments. Some survivors struggle with pain, fatigue, and mental health problems, in addition to secondary health problems because of chemotherapy or radiation therapy.
• While some survivors return to their previous work, others may change jobs, or reduce working hours, because of their illness, reducing their economic productivity.
• there are also the indirect, or third party, effects of cancer. There are over one million people in the UK caring for someone with cancer. In this way, cancer may also have an impact on the economic productivity of friends and family members.
• There are also enormous stresses placed on family life and general well-being on all those involved.
• 2018 - 54,000 people under the age of 70 lost their lives to cancer. These individuals would have contributed £585 million to the UK economy.

  Across the rest of their working lives we estimate that these individuals would have contributed £6.8 billion in real terms in a single year.
• If current rates of cancer incidence and mortality persist, the UK economy will lose well over 200,000 potential workers over the next five years and over 500,000 over the next decade, resulting in economic losses for the UK economy that could run to tens of billions of pounds.
• link between the incidence of cancer and socioeconomic deprivation is well known.
• Deprivation increases the likelihood of smoking, alcohol consumption and obesity. All are major causes of cancer.
• In the UK, cancer rates in some of the poorest areas are three times greater than in the most affluent
• Glasgow has the highest cancer rate of any UK health authority and it is no coincidence that in the wider central Scotland region, over half the population lives in wards which are among the 20% most deprived in the UK.
• This association between deprivation and cancer is also strongly entrenched in former industrial areas in northern England, south Wales and London.
• Of the 50 most deprived small census areas in England, 34 are in the northwest region and 17 in the Merseyside conurbation alone.
• Two health authorities with the highest cancer rates in England, Liverpool and Manchester, are in the northwest region.
• Cancer survival rates are also affected by socio-economic status.
• For all types of cancer there is a deprivation gap, with the more affluent having better survival chances than the most deprived.
• 14.2% more women in the ‘most affluent group’ survive bladder cancer compared with their most deprived counterparts. This difference is largely explained by pre-existing health status and speed of diagnosis.