Lifespan Dispersion in Times of Life Expectancy Fluctuation: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have experienced considerable instability in mortality since the 1960s. Long periods of stagnating life expectancy were followed by rapid increases in life expectancy and, in some cases, even more rapid declines, before more recent periods of improvement. These trends have been well documented, but to date, no study has comprehensively explored trends in lifespan variation. We improved such analyses by incorporating life disparity as a health indicator alongside life expectancy, examining trends since the 1960s for 12 countries from the region. Generally, life disparity was high and fluctuated strongly over the period. For nearly 30 of these years, life expectancy and life disparity varied independently of each other, largely because mortality trends ran in opposite directions over different ages. Furthermore, we quantified the impact of large classes of diseases on life disparity trends since 1994 using a newly harmonized cause-of-death time series for eight countries in the region. Mortality patterns in CEE countries were heterogeneous and ran counter to the common patterns observed in most developed countries. They contribute to the discussion about life expectancy disparity by showing that expansion/compression levels do not necessarily mean lower/higher life expectancy or mortality deterioration/improvements.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13524-018-0729-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A Decomposition of Life Expectancy and Life Disparity: Comparison Between Hong Kong and Japan

“…Unlike the increase in life expectancy which can be achieved by saving lives at all ages, the change in life disparity is determined by the balance of changes in mortality at young and old age groups. 20,21 As shown, Hong Kong had higher life disparities than Japan for both males and females in the earlier periods. This was mainly contributed by Hong Kong's higher mortality rates in the 0, 25-59, and 60-74 age groups.…”

Dynamics of life expectancy and life span equality

“…In Denmark, life span equality decreased among the lowest income subgroup over the period of 1986 to 2014 despite the increase in life expectancy (19). In some countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America, life expectancy and life span equality moved independently over periods of slow improvements in life expectancy (20)(21)(22). Indeed, in many countries and subgroups within a country in recent decades, life span equality declined, although the average life span rose or vice versa (as indicated by the points in the second and fourth quadrants of Fig.…”

Lexis fields

“…More recently, researchers have described several cases where an increase in life expectancy is not followed by a decrease in lifespan variation (Aburto et al 2020). For example, in Eastern Europe, in periods of slow improvements in mortality, life expectancy at birth and lifespan variation moved in the same direction (Aburto and van Raalte 2018). The same was observed among the most deprived groups of males in Scotland in the first decade of the 2000s (Seaman, Riffe, and Caswell 2019).…”