Older people and their families are more likely than their counterparts in many other countries to pay large care bills because of the way social care is funded. A generation of elderly people missed out on better long-term care as successive governments ducked reform, leaving England “the poor man of Europe” for social care, it said. England also fared badly when compared with Japan.

The report by Incisive Health, a consultancy, for Age UK looked at the funding and effectiveness of social care in developed countries with similar demographic challenges to England of an ageing population and falling birth rate. The government plans to publish reforms to England’s social care this autumn, while cash-strapped councils have cut the fees they pay for care, leaving many care homes struggling.

The study concluded that England’s social care system was behind Germany, Japan and France, whose governments define national entitlements, and Spain and Italy where services vary by region. These countries each provide some basic support to elderly people regardless of wealth, use a flexible means test or limit total costs. In England care costs must be met in full by anyone with assets above £23,250.

France had the most progressive social care system, funded by national insurance, Incisive Health concluded. Payments are collected as part of income tax with top-up payments from individuals using a gradual means test or the private insurance market.

Germany’s system was judged the best funded, paid for by an income tax levy of 2.55 per cent, of which half is paid by employers.

The study praised Japan for expanding support to its ageing population, with half the funding from general taxation and a third from an additional levy on people aged between 40 and 65. People are also required to pay 10 per cent of their care costs.

The authors said that social care in Spain, which is organised and funded regionally with some national taxation, had been good until its government made cuts when the economy stalled.

Italy has a highly localised system, with many areas paying cash directly to families but the report said that in poorer parts of southern Italy these payments were often used to supplement incomes rather than for care.

Remember when Theresa May stood on the steps of Downing Street in July 2016 and delivered her first speech as prime minister, promising to correct Britain’s “burning injustices”? One of these injustices was that those born poor die nine years earlier. And yet according to David Buck – an expert in health inequalities at the King’s Fund – the gap in health outcomes and life expectancy between the most affluent and the least well-off is only widening under her abysmal premiership.

What could possibly be causing this national disaster? Rule out alcohol use: it has been steadily falling, with the ONS finding in 2016 that alcohol consumption had fallen to its lowest rate since the survey began in 2005. There are fewer smokers in England than ever. As Dorling notes, there has not been a major influenza outbreak since the increase in life expectancy ground to a halt. Neither is it credible to suggest Britain has simply reached a plateau – that life expectancy cannot keep increasing for ever. “We are a long way off that,” as Professor Martin McKee has put it, observing that life expectancy in Japan and Scandinavian nations is higher.

Given the government is refusing a national inquiry into the great standstill in life expectancy, experts are left without a credible explanation other than austerity.

Consider specific policies. The NHS has suffered the longest squeeze in its funding as a share of the economy since it was founded after the war. Its annual increase in funding in the first four years of Tory-led rule was 1.3%, despite growing patient demand and increasing healthcare costs. Then there’s social care for the elderly: a devastating £6bn less spent since David Cameron entered Downing Street. As Dorling and Basten note, since 2010, many care homes – all too often a privately run racket – have closed; and cuts to social security, not least disability benefits, have undoubtedly played a role. There are other chilling factors at play, too. Until the financial crash, Britain’s suicide rate had been falling. Since then, experts believe there could have been an extra 1,000 deaths from suicide and an additional 30 to 40,000 attempts, with austerity playing a role.

This country and its people will be paying for the Tories’ ideologically driven disaster for years to come. Those children driven into poverty will have worse health and lowered educational opportunities as a consequence, undermining their potential, and with it the potential of the whole country. As living standards stagnate, a consumer debt bubble beckons, with potentially disastrous economic consequences. Public services and infrastructure will creak. But there is far more at stake.