Stalling Life Expectancy Improvements across Districts of the European Union – a Study on within- and Cross-Border Patterns and the Contribution of Age and Cause Specific Mortality

Tobias Vogt , Population Research Centre, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
Pavel Grigoriev, Federal Institute for Population Research
michael muehlichen, Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB),
Rok Hrzic, Maastricht University

Stalling improvements in life expectancy have been observed in several high-income countries, including the UK and the US, during the past decade. Existing research has attributed these unfavorable trends to stagnating declines in mortality among working-age and older populations, especially from cardiovascular diseases. Studies on slowing life expectancy improvements among EU member states have mainly focused on country comparisons or regional analyses within single countries. Our study extends this research by exploring potentially stagnating life expectancy patterns at the district level within and across 20 EU member states, accounting for age- and cause-specific contributions to these trends. We use harmonized mortality data by age, sex and groups of causes of death at the NUTS-3 level from 1995–2022 from the REDIM project to estimate life expectancy and its improvements at the district level over time. We further apply spatial clustering analysis to identify regions with stagnating life expectancy. For these regions, we decompose the changes in life expectancy by age and cause using linear integral decomposition. Based on initial research, we expect to find clusters of decelerating and potentially stalling life expectancy improvements within and across old and new EU member states, likely driven by slowing declines in cardiovascular mortality at middle and older ages, particularly among men.

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 Presented in Session P6. Health, Mortality, and Ageing 2