Mortality: Transitions and Measures

Abstract

In the course of human history, life expectancy at birth has increased from around 20–30 years during prehistoric times to 75–80 years in many low‐mortality countries today. Nearly half of this decline has taken place during the twentieth century. In the middle of the 1500s, at the start of the first available continuous series of national mortality estimates, life expectancy in England was still in the mid‐30s and showed little sustained improvement until the nineteenth century. By the end of the 1800s, however, steady mortality decline had begun in all European countries for which reliable data series are available, and by the end of the twentieth century, life expectancy had reached the mid‐ to upper 70s in many industrialized countries. Although national‐level mortality data did not become available for the United States until 1933, existing evidence suggests that mortality decline in the US was similar to that in England. The highest life expectancy has been recorded in Japan, a developed country where health improvements in the early part of the twentieth century lagged behind those of European countries, but where mortality declines have been particularly impressive since the 1950s. Life expectancy at birth in Japan reached 84.6 years for women and 77.6 years for men by the year 2000. Moreover, the United Nations' estimates show an average life expectancy of 74.8 years in the more developed regions of the world, with 56 percent of industrialized countries having life expectancies of over 75 years in 1995–2000 (Table 1). The lowest life expectancies in industrialized countries are found in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where health conditions stagnated during the late twentieth century, particularly for adult men.