Changing life expectancy in European countries 1990–2021

• Published in: The Lancet Public Health
• Main Authors: Steel, Nicholas, Bauer-Staeb, Clarissa Maria Mercedes, Ford, John A., Abbafati, Cristiana, Abdalla, Mohammed Altigani, Abdelkader, Atef, Abdi, Parsa, Abeldaño Zuñiga, Roberto Ariel, Abiodun, Olugbenga Olusola, Abolhassani, Hassan, Abu-Gharbieh, Eman, Abukhadijah, Hana J., Abu-Zaid, Ahmed, Addo, Isaac Yeboah, Addolorato, Giovanni, Adekanmbi, Victor, Adetunji, Juliana Bunmi, Adeyeoluwa, Temitayo Esther, Agardh, Emilie E., Agyemang-Duah, Williams, Ahmad, Danish, Ahmed, Syed Anees, Akinosoglou, Karolina, Akkaif, Mohammed Ahmed, Al Awaidy, Salah, Al Hasan, Syed Mahfuz, Al Zaabi, Omar Ali Mohammed, Aldridge, Robert W., Algammal, Abdelazeem M., Al-Gheethi, Adel Ali Saeed, Ali, Abid, Ali, Mohammed Usman, Ali, Syed Shujait, Ali, Waad, Alicandro, Gianfranco, Alif, Sheikh Mohammad, Al-Jumaily, Adel, Allebeck, Peter, Alrawashdeh, Ahmad, Al-Rifai, Rami H., Alsabri, Mohammed A., Aluh, Deborah Oyine, Conde, Joao, Farinha, Carla Sofia e.Sá, Ferreira, Nuno, Ortiz, Alberto, Ribeiro, Ana Isabel, Silva, João Pedro
• Other Authors: NOVA Medical School|Faculdade de Ciências Médicas (NMS|FCM), CENSE - Centro de Investigação em Ambiente e Sustentabilidade, DCM - Departamento de Ciência dos Materiais, Comprehensive Health Research Centre (CHRC) - pólo NMS, DI - Departamento de Informática, NOVALincs
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2025
• Subjects: Public Health; Environmental and Occupational Health; SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being; Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/181558; https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(25)00009-X

Funding Information: The research reported in this publication was funded by the Gates Foundation. Publisher Copyright: © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license 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 ...