| Contributors: |
Steel, N.; Bauer-Staeb, C. M. M.; Ford, J. A.; Abbafati, C.; Abdalla, M. A.; Abdelkader, A.; Abdi, P.; Abeldano Zuniga, R. A.; Abiodun, O. O.; Abolhassani, H.; Abu-Gharbieh, E.; Abukhadijah, H. J.; Abu-Zaid, A.; Addo, I. Y.; Addolorato, G.; Adekanmbi, V.; Adetunji, J. B.; Adeyeoluwa, T. E.; Agardh, E. E.; Agyemang-Duah, W.; Ahmad, D.; Ahmed, A.; Ahmed, S. A.; Akinosoglou, K.; Akkaif, M. A.; Al Awaidy, S.; Al Hasan, S. M.; Al Zaabi, O. A. M.; Aldridge, R. W.; Algammal, A. M.; Al-Gheethi, A. A. S.; Ali, A.; Ali, M. U.; Ali, S. S.; Ali, W.; Alicandro, G.; Alif, S. M.; Al-Jumaily, A.; Allebeck, P.; Alrawashdeh, A.; Al-Rifai, R. H.; Alsabri, M. A.; Alshahrani, N. Z.; Aluh, D. O.; Al-Wardat, M.; Al-Zyoud, W. A.; Amiri, S.; Anderlini, D.; Andrei, C. L.; Anil, A.; Anvari, S.; Anyasodor, A. E.; Appiah, S. C. Y.; Aquilano, M.; Arabloo, J.; Arafat, M.; Areda, D.; Aremu, A.; Armani, K.; Armocida, B.; Arnlov, J.; Asaduzzaman, M.; Astell-Burt, T.; Aujayeb, A.; Ausloos, M.; Azadnajafabad, S.; Aziz, S.; Azzam, A. Y.; Babu, G. R.; Badache, A. C.; Badiye, A. D.; Bahramian, S.; Baig, A. A.; Baker, J. L.; Bansal, H.; Barnighausen, T. W.; Barone, M. T. U.; Barrow, A.; Barteit, S.; Bashir, S.; Bashiru, H. A.; Basso, J. D.; Bastan, M. -M.; Basu, S.; Batra, K.; Bauckneht, M.; Baune, B. T.; Beghi, M.; Beiranvand, M.; Bejot, Y.; Bell, M. L.; Bello, O. O.; Belo, L.; Beloukas, A.; Beneke, A. A.; Bettencourt, P. J. G.; Bhagavathula, A. S.; Bhala, N.; Bhaskar, S. |
| Description: |
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 ... |