There are ghosts sitting in the Cottage bar in Glasgow's Calton area. The locals call them the missing generation, the men who died before their time. Sometimes the drinkers dip their heads or lift their pints to them. They may not see them but all the drinkers know they are there. Jimmy, Swifty, Davy and many more.

For here in this multi-deprived inner city area, the average life expectancy of a male is just 53.9 years. In Iraq, after 10 years of sanctions, a war and a continuing conflict, suicide bombs and insurgency, the average man has a good chance of making it into his 60s; the life expectancy of a male there is 67.49. In Iran it is 69.96, in North Korea, 71.37 and in the Gaza Strip it is 70.5.

Statistics recently revealed that the Calton ward has not just the lowest life expectancy in the United Kingdom and Europe but of many areas of the world. A child born in the Calton - locals always prefix a "the" to Calton - arrives into an environment saturated by drink, drugs, smoking and poor diet. A baby girl has more of a chance of survival - her life expectancy at birth is 74.8.

In the Calton, according to statistics compiled by NHS Health Scotland, 26% of the population say their health is not good and 52% smoke, compared with 25% of Scotland's average population. Alcohol abuse admissions to hospital are way above the national average. Also eating away at Calton's life expectancy are cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, drug overdose and suicide. For here, deprivation bites into almost every home: 44% are on incapacity benefit, 37% live in a workless household and 30% of homes are occupied by a lone parent.

Such startling figures were this week seized upon by the Conservative leader, David Cameron, at the launch of his party's social justice policy. He attacked the chancellor, saying: "We desperately need new thinking if we're to tackle the problems of multiple deprivation ... We must realise that Gordon Brown's ever-growing state cannot win the war on poverty on its own.

"Gordon Brown says that only the state can guarantee fairness. One look at his record exposes the hollowness of his claim. If life in Calton and Drumchapel is his definition of fairness I suggest he rethinks his guarantee."

Nearly two years ago, the country was startled to learn that life expectancy in the Glasgow constituency of Shettleston was 63, 13 years less than the UK average. Scotland was dubbed the "sick man of Europe" and the Scottish executive said it was a national scandal. But the microscope was not directed at an even worse ghetto of deprivation.

The Calton is not your typical sink estate. It is less than half a mile from some of Europe's most stylish shopping streets. There, the shops sell Versace, here, white bread, Irn Bru, processed foods and alcohol.

The Cottage bar rubs shoulders with the Bridgeton health centre and some come directly out of one and into the other. It is the same with Munro's chemist across the road.

Inside the Cottage, a pall of smoke welcomes drinkers.

Paul MacMillan, 45, a site manager who has lived in the Calton for 20 years, is sanguine about the 54 statistic. After pausing for thought on some of the world's comparisons, he said: "It doesn't surprise me. In Iraq they are Muslim, so there is no alcohol. All their food is fresh. There's a different environment. They have the sun on their back. And they don't have social security handing them money every week so they have to go and get themselves a job.

Drug addicts

"Here everybody takes a drink. The social is paying for a lot of it. The Calton is full of fast food and that doesn't help. There's a heavy drug problem - at the chemist on a Wednesday the queue is a mile long with addicts and you are lucky if half of them have two legs.

"There is a generation missing here. I don't hook up with that statistic right enough. I work hard and play hard and I know I am not going to die at 54," he said, before finishing his pint.

The Calton is home to a number of the city's hostels and hotels, taking in adults with problems related to drugs, alcohol, homelessness, prostitution and mental health. Deaths among this sector bring the life expectancy down dramatically, but it does not explain the 54 figure away. Many of the addicts and alcoholics living in Calton were born there.

Auld Alec is 65, his walking stick, rheumy eyes, red nose and shortness of breath signalling his health problems. He has lived here almost all his life. "The Calton is famous for its drinking culture. It's a mixture of a large influx of people from Donegal and people from the Highlands. That statistic doesn't shock me," he said. "I'm lucky I've made it this far."

Fresh food shortage

At one time the backbone of industrial Glasgow, the Calton, with its men working in shipyards and foundries, was skirted by the city's markets - the meat market, fish market, cheese market - all supplying fresh food, all of them, along with the industrial jobs, gone.

Another Cottage customer said that food was the problem: "It's all the shite they are eating. They wouldn't even know what a good dinner is, they don't know what mince and totties or stew is. That's how your child birth weights are down. The mother not eating and her iron and protein levels are down. They call it the Posh Spice syndrome. The wean has no chance right away."

Sitting in another corner, under a no-smoking sign, is the Cookie Gang, which meets every Friday and is so called because a wife always bakes a cake to be eaten in the pub. All went to school together in the Calton, all left, their complexions speaking of a healthier lifestyle. None smoke and they welcome Scotland's pending ban on smoking in enclosed public places.

Matt Sawyers, 61, laughed at first when he heard the statistic and said: "Oh, Christ, I got out in time."

But then he pondered: "Right enough, all the boys I know who stayed here, they all died round about that time, 54. I think the heavy drink killed them and the cigarettes. Their ghosts are all around you."

Life expectancy (men)

Andorra (highest): 80.6

United Kingdom: 75.9

Gaza Strip: 70.5

Calton, Glasgow: 53.9

Liberia: 38.9

Swaziland (lowest): 32.5