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1 Difference Between Life Expectancy in the United States and Other High-Income Countries
Pages 7-25

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From page 7... ... . Between 1950 and 1995, the mortality rate at each age declined at a roughly constant pace in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Tuljapurkar et al., 2000) Read the entire page →
From page 8... ... 8.92* Sweden 72.44 26.48 5.72 78.85 30.91 7.67 82.95 34.10 9.23 United States 71.02 26.55 6.88 77.48 30.56 8.58 80.78 33.06 9.82 Men Australia 66.53 22.75 5.62 71.01 24.97 6.30 79.27 31.58 8.39 Canada 66.16 23.93 5.93 71.60 25.69 6.83 78.35 30.75 8.40 Denmark 69.10 25.06 5.45 71.17 24.78 6.25 76.13 28.45 7.24 England and Wales 66.51 22.51 5.03 70.74 24.07 5.72 77.46* Read the entire page →
From page 9... ... . The most recent life table for the United States published by NCHS provides estimates of life expectancy at 50 in 2006 that are approximately 0.6 years lower for women and 0.5 years lower for men than the estimates provided in the Human Mortality Database (Arias et al., 2010) Read the entire page →
From page 10... ... . 90 USA New Zealand 85 Sweden Denmark Life Expectancy at Birth Australia 80 Norway Iceland 75 Netherlands Switzerland Japan 70 65 60 55 1890 1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 2010 Year FIGURE 1-2 Trend in highest recorded level of female life expectancy achieved versus trend in life expectancy in FigUnited States. Read the entire page →
From page 11... ... . Furthermore, the design of the study strongly suggested that the American health disadvantage could not be explained simply by reference to problems associated with an inefficient health care system, the lack of universal health care coverage, or large racial and socioeconomic disparities in the United States. Read the entire page →
From page 12... ... , the empirical observations outlined above have, to some degree, deflected demographers' attention away from the debate over the limit to life expectancy and toward a new focus on the heterogeneity of mortality experience among countries. In 1995, for example, Manton and Vaupel assembled evidence showing that, for people aged 80 and above, life expectancy was greater in the United States than it was in Sweden, France, England, or Japan, at least until 1987 (Manton and Vaupel, 1995) Read the entire page →
From page 13... ... identified Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States as the countries with the smallest mortality improvements. The United States, once a leader in longevity, particularly with respect to mortality at the oldest ages, has been falling further and further behind other countries (Rau et al., 2008) Read the entire page →
From page 14... ... The large circle represents the position of the United States each year. SOURCE: Data from Human Mortality Database (http://www.mortality.org/ [ac cessed December 8, 2010] Read the entire page →
From page 15... ... The Fig 1-4.eps large circle represents the position of the United States each year. SOURCE: Data from Human Mortality Database (http://www.mortality.org/ [accessed December 8, 2010] Read the entire page →
From page 16... ... The large circle represents the position of the United States each year. SOURCE: Data from Human Mortality Database (http://www.mortality.org/ [ac cessed December 8, 2010] Read the entire page →
From page 17... ... The large circle represents the position of the United States each year. SOURCE: Data from Human Mortality Database (http://www.mortality.org/ [accessed December 8, 2010] Read the entire page →
From page 18... ... women have relatively high mortality rates at the younger older ages but compare quite favorably 4A similar observation has been made by Ho and Preston (2010) , who use data from the Human Mortality Database for 2005 to compare age-specific death rates for the United States with those for a comparison set of 17 OECD countries. Read the entire page →
From page 19... ... women at age 75 but not at age 85 or 95 (not shown) over the past 25 years suggests important cohort patterns may underlie these mortality trends.5 Trailblazers Versus Stragglers The panel considered whether there are countries other than the United States whose mortality experience over the recent past might provide important clues as to factors that can explain their own relatively poor performance and that of the United States. Read the entire page →
From page 20... ... . Fig 1-9.eps landscape Read the entire page →
From page 21... ... . Fig 1-10.eps landscape Read the entire page →
From page 22... ... Life expectancy at age 65 in the four countries converged until the early 1980s, when it was virtually identical in all four. In about 1984, however, trends in female life expectancy began to diverge sharply so that by 2000, the levels of life expectancy in the United States and the Netherlands had fallen significantly behind those in France and Japan. Read the entire page →
From page 23... ... To date, no satisfactory explanation of these patterns has been proposed. A clearer understanding of what accounts for the observed differences in life expectancy and the observed trends at older ages among high-income countries may help identify important modifiable risk factors that could inform the development of new initiatives aimed at improving life expectancy in the United States still further. Read the entire page →
From page 24... ... The panel also chose to focus on one principal indicator of mortality at older ages -- life expectancy at age 50, or how long a 50-year-old could be expected to live according to the set of age-specific death rates recorded in any particular country and period. While this measure summarizes mortality circumstances at ages above 50, it does not provide a perfect indicator of what happens at every age in that range or of the age pattern of mortality itself.6 Chapter 2 provides a closer look at cause-of-death statistics by gender over the past half century for the selected subsample of 10 countries; it also explores differences in current health status between the United States and the other countries. Read the entire page →
From page 25... ... disadvantage in life expectancy because the United States ranks low in per capita alcohol consumption among OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2010) Read the entire page →

From page 7...

... . Between 1950 and 1995, the mortality rate at each age declined at a roughly constant pace in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States (Tuljapurkar et al., 2000)

1 Difference Between Life Expectancy in the United States and Other High-Income Countries Pages 7-25

1 Difference Between Life Expectancy in the United States and Other High-Income Countries
Pages 7-25