Characterizing levels and trends in the sex gap in life expectancy in Latin America 2000-2019.

Jesús-Daniel Zazueta Borboa, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
Marília Nepomuceno, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
José Manuel Aburto, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)

In Latin American countries (LAC) little is known about the size and trends in the sex gap in life expectancy. Our objectives are (1) to identify trends in the sex gap in life expectancy in LAC and (2) to assess the contribution of different age groups and causes of death driving the trends in the sex gap in e0 from 2000-2019. We used life tables from the UN World Population Prospects 2022 and data from the World Health Organization (WHO), to calculate and decompose levels and trends in the sex gap in e0 across LAC. Between 2000 and 2019, in most of the LAC, we observed a general tendency to widen the sex gap in e0 driving mostly due to diabetes, and ischemic heart diseases at adult and older ages. Countries that successfully reduced the sex gap in e0 were due to an important reduction in homicides at younger ages. In LAC improvements in health behaviors such as smoking-attributable mortality and external causes of death contributed to reducing the sex gap in all four countries. Our findings show that, unlike what we observed in low-mortality countries, trends in the sex gap in e0 differ across countries in Latin America.

Keywords: Decomposition analysis, Mortality and Longevity, Health and Morbidity, Inequality, Disadvantage and Discrimination

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