Life expectancy across countries: Convergence, divergence and fluctuations

Anna-Maria Aksan and Shankha Chakraborty

World Development, 2023, vol. 168, issue C

Abstract: We document the evolution of life expectancies around the world during 1960-2015 using graphical analysis, statistical decomposition of survival gains by age-groups and by measuring the contribution of each age-group to changes in the global and regional distributions of life expectancy at birth. We emphasize three findings. First, enormous gains in early-life survival have led to unconditional convergence in life expectancy at birth across countries while late-life longevity has diverged. Gains have been higher for females than males. Secondly, global and regional survival gains among the elderly, though smaller than among the young, have strongly influenced changes in country rankings of life expectancy at birth with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa. Country rankings for late-life survival have changed relatively more than for younger ages. Third, the divergence in survival gains among the elderly is related to disparities in healthcare access, driven in part by within- and between-country income inequality. While providing fresh insight into the uneven pace of health changes during the past half century, these results also highlight how policy can address the socio-economic and demographic consequences of aging.

Keywords: Life expectancy; Survival gains; Inequality; Aging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I14 O57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X23000815
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:168:y:2023:i:c:s0305750x23000815

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2023.106263

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().