By Chauna Gibson
Life expectancy around the world has increased and is continuing to rise. According to the World Bank, in 1990, the average life expectancy was 65.4 years of age, in 2015, the average life expectancy at birth was 71.9. It is important to understand how we got this far in extending human lifespan and how to maintain the rise in life expectancy by looking at things we’re doing right versus what we need to work on. Due to economic development people are now expecting to live longer. Life expectancy has increased because of improvement in a number of areas including sanitation, improved public health measures, refrigeration and vaccination. Despite the progress made in extending life expectancy, there are still disparities among regions. Below is the current life expectancy across the globe in 2015.
It is easy to assume that the more money that is put into health care, the higher the life expectancy of a nation's population. Higher income also implies better access to housing, education, health services and other items which tend to lead to improved health, lower rates of mortality and higher life expectancy. Japan however has a higher life expectancy compared to the U.S. According to Squires & Anderson (2015), the U.S spends far more money on health care than Japan. While the U.S has expensive services and spends about 12% of its GDP on new and improved technology, Japan spends less than 9% of its GDP (Squires & Anderson 2015). For the most part, looking at the average in life expectancy across different countries indicates that life expectancy is significantly higher in developed countries as compared to developing countries. For example, life expectancy is less than 55 years in nine sub-Saharan African countries – Angola, Central African Republic, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lesotho, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. In Kenya for instance, the life expectancy stands at 62 years while in the United States it stands at 79 years. Japan, which has a highly developed healthcare system, has an 83-years average life expectancy.
The top six countries where life expectancy increased the most included Liberia, which saw a nearly 20-year increase (from 42 years in 1990 to 61 years in 2012) followed by Ethiopia (from 45 to 64 years), and Rwanda (48 to 65 years). “But there is still a major rich-poor divide: people in high-income countries continue to have a much better chance of living longer than people in low-income countries," said Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General.
The highest cause of mortality in poor countries still remains due to poor health care services, poor diet and improper management of chronic infections. These countries will suffer more disease burden compared to higher income countries and therefore have a lower life expectancy. In developed countries as life expectancy increases, the proportion of communicable, maternal and perinatal causes decreases, while the proportion of non-communicable diseases (such as heart disease and cancer) increases (Feigin, 2016). People around the world are living longer, even in developing countries, but alongside living longer, people are living longer with disease and other disabilities. According to the Global Burden of Disease, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), top four causes of death in 1990 are ischemic heart diseases, Stroke, Pneumonia and diarrheal diseases. Comparatively, in 2015 the top four causes of death were Ischemic heart disease, Stroke, lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Of the 56.4 million deaths worldwide in 2015, more than half (54%) were due to the top 10 causes. Ischemic heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers, accounting for a combined 15 million deaths in 2015 (WHO fact sheet 2017).
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/
As both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy increase, changes in rates of health loss become increasingly crucial. The world has made great progress in health, but now the challenge is to invest in finding more effective ways of preventing or treating the major causes of illness and disability and closing the gap of health outcomes in underdeveloped and developed countries.
References
Feigin, V. (2016). Global, regional, and national life expectancy, all-cause mortality, and cause-specific mortality for 249 causes of death, 1980-2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015. The lancet, 388(10053), 1459-1544.
Mathers, C. D., Stevens, G. A., Boerma, T., White, R. A., & Tobias, M. I. (2015). Causes of international increases in older age life expectancy. The Lancet, 385(9967), 540-548.
Max Roser. (2017). ‘Life Expectancy’. Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy/
Skinner, J., & Staiger, D. (2015). Technology diffusion and productivity growth in health care. Review of Economics and Statistics, 97(5), 951-964.
Squires, D., & Anderson, C. (2015). US health care from a global perspective: spending, use of services, prices, and health in 13 countries. The Commonwealth Fund, 15, 1-16.
The Lancet. (2015, August 26). Life expectancy climbs worldwide but people spend more years living with illness and disability. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 6, 2017 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/08/150826204220.htm
http://www.healthdata.org/news-release/life-expectancy-increases-globally-death-toll-falls-major-diseases