Global life expectancy has increased dramatically over the past century, with Australia among the best performing countries.
But over the past two decades, some high-income countries have reported stagnation or even a decline in life expectancy, most notably the United States and the United Kingdom.
Could this indicate a broader decline in healthcare progress in English-speaking countries?
Our new study compared life expectancy between English-speaking countries and other high-income countries.
We found that Australians born between 1930 and 1969 continue to do exceptionally well in terms of life expectancy. But the picture for people under 50 is not so rosy: life expectancy for that younger group is stagnating.
Why measure life expectancy?
Life expectancy is a valuable and commonly used measure to examine health trends and patterns over time and compare different places or population groups.
It estimates the average number of years a person is expected to live. This is calculated using the death rates – or mortality rates – across different age groups within a specific period. When mortality rates decrease, life expectancy increases, and vice versa.
Life expectancy not only tells us about mortality in a population, but is also indirectly a measure of the general health of the population. The leading causes of death in high-income countries are chronic diseases.
Stagnations or reversals in life expectancy can be warning signs of both long-standing and emerging health problems.
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has also pointed to mortality as a key indicator of economic success and failure. This makes it a powerful tool for researchers and policy makers.
Thanks to a long and largely standardized tradition of collecting mortality statistics in high-income countries, researchers are able to conduct in-depth, comparative studies.
This can help discover how specific causes of death have contributed to the changes in life expectancy.
What we did
In our study, we analyzed mortality trends and patterns in a broader group of English-speaking countries and compared them with other high-income countries.
English-speaking countries have shown similarities in recent mortality trends and their causes, such as patterns of drug overdoses and the prevalence of obesity. Our analysis focuses on six high-income English-speaking countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the US.
We compared them with the average in 14 other high-income, low-mortality countries from Western Europe (such as France and Norway), plus Japan. This was the ‘comparison group’.
We used data since 1970 from established, comprehensive sources of high-quality mortality data: the Human Mortality Database and the World Health Organization Mortality Database.
For each English-speaking country and the comparison group, we estimate:
- life expectancy at birth
- partial life expectancy between 0 and 50 years
- remaining life expectancy at age 50
- average lifespan.
By looking at the average lifespan, you can compare the mortality of birth cohorts (people born in the same calendar year) as they get older.
This measure is the best way to estimate how long people in different populations actually live, and can be used to assess differences in survival between populations.
First, we looked at how age and causes of death contributed to a gap between English-speaking countries and the comparison group. We then compared the average lifespan of different birth cohorts.
What we found
In the pre-COVID-19 period, both men and women in Australia had higher life expectancy at birth, compared to the non-English speaking comparison group (the average across those 14 countries).
This also applied to men in Ireland, New Zealand and Canada. However, in Britain and the US, life expectancy at birth was lower for both men and women, compared to the non-English speaking group.
But the most striking finding was the difference in mortality among people under 50 in English-speaking versus non-English-speaking countries.
The relatively high mortality rates for people under 50 have reduced overall life expectancy at birth for every English-speaking country, including Australia. Suicides and drug or alcohol-related deaths were the main reason for these trends.
But over 50, Australia performs exceptionally well in terms of life expectancy for both men and women.
Australians born in the 1930s and 1960s are likely to live longer than those in the non-English speaking comparison group and all other English-speaking countries.
But Australians born in the 1970s had a lower life expectancy than the comparison group.
This means that life expectancy at birth in Australia is higher overall than the average for the non-English group. But when you break it down by age, the results show a clear distinction in life expectancy depending on when you were born.
For example, in 2017-2019, life expectancy for men aged 0 to 50 was 0.3 years lower in Australia compared to the average for the non-English group, while remaining life expectancy at age 50 was 1.45 years higher.
What this means
Our research shows a worrying trend for people born from the 1970s onwards. This applies to all English-speaking countries, even before taking into account the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in places like the UK and the US.
In Australia, results indicate significant generational differences in life expectancy compared to other high-income countries.
If the relatively high mortality rates of Australians born from the 1970s onwards continue into the future, the increase in Australian life expectancy is likely to slow.
Our status as having will decrease.
Our research aimed to investigate trends and possible causes of stagnant life expectancy, rather than making policy recommendations.
But the results suggest that real improvement could come from measures that reduce the inequalities and structural disadvantages that lead to poor health outcomes, such as improving access to education and employment and housing security, supporting mental health and drug-related safety, and addressing
Sergey Timonin is a Research Fellow in Demography at the School of Demography at the Australian National University. Tim Adair is a Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne.
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