Changing life expectancy in European countries 1990–2021: a subanalysis of causes and risk factors from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Decades of steady improvements in life expectancy in Europe slowed down from around 2011, well before the COVID-19 pandemic, for reasons which remain disputed. We aimed to assess how changes in risk factors and cause-specific death rates in different European countries related to changes in life expectancy in those countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We used data and methods from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2021 to compare changes in life expectancy at birth, causes of death, and population exposure to risk factors in 16 European Economic Area countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden) and the four UK nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales) for three time periods: 1990-2011, 2011-19, and 2019-21. Changes in life expectancy and causes of death were estimated with an established life expectancy cause-specific decomposition method, and compared with summary exposure values of risk factors for the major causes of death influencing life expectancy. FINDINGS: All countries showed mean annual improvements in life expectancy in both 1990-2011 (overall mean 0·23 years [95% uncertainty interval [UI] 0·23 to 0·24]) and 2011-19 (overall mean 0·15 years [0·13 to 0·16]). The rate of improvement was lower in 2011-19 than in 1990-2011 in all countries except for Norway, where the mean annual increase in life expectancy rose from 0·21 years (95% UI 0·20 to 0·22) in 1990-2011 to 0·23 years (0·21 to 0·26) in 2011-19 (difference of 0·03 years). In other countries, the difference in mean annual improvement between these periods ranged from -0·01 years in Iceland (0·19 years [95% UI 0·16 to 0·21] vs 0·18 years [0·09 to 0·26]), to -0·18 years in England (0·25 years [0·24 to 0·25] vs 0·07 years [0·06 to 0·08]). In 2019-21, there was an overall decrease in mean annual life expectancy across all countries (overall mean -0·18 years [95% UI -0·22 to -0·13]), with all countries having an absolute fall in life expectancy except for Ireland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, which showed marginal improvement in life expectancy, and Belgium, which showed no change in life expectancy. Across countries, the causes of death responsible for the largest improvements in life expectancy from 1990 to 2011 were cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms. Deaths from cardiovascular diseases were the primary driver of reductions in life expectancy improvements during 2011-19, and deaths from respiratory infections and other COVID-19 pandemic-related outcomes were responsible for the decreases in life expectancy during 2019-21. Deaths from cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms in 2019 were attributable to high systolic blood pressure, dietary risks, tobacco smoke, high LDL cholesterol, high BMI, occupational risks, high alcohol use, and other risks including low physical activity. Exposure to these major risk factors differed by country, with trends of increasing exposure to high BMI and decreasing exposure to tobacco smoke observed in all countries during 1990-2021. INTERPRETATION: The countries that best maintained improvements in life expectancy after 2011 (Norway, Iceland, Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden) did so through better maintenance of reductions in mortality from cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms, underpinned by decreased exposures to major risks, possibly mitigated by government policies. The continued improvements in life expectancy in five countries during 2019-21 indicate that these countries were better prepared to withstand the COVID-19 pandemic. By contrast, countries with the greatest slowdown in life expectancy improvements after 2011 went on to have some of the largest decreases in life expectancy in 2019-21. These findings suggest that government policies that improve population health also build resilience to future shocks. Such policies include reducing population exposure to major upstream risks for cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms, such as harmful diets and low physical activity, tackling the commercial determinants of poor health, and ensuring access to affordable health services. FUNDING: Gates Foundation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".