Subnational Working-Age Life Expectancy in Three High Income Countries: Trends since 1971

Drew Schaefer, University of Texas at San Antonio

Recent stalls and declines to life expectancy in several high-income countries have raised concerns about comprehensive population health. Particular attention has been paid to the worsening health outcomes of adults in midlife in part due to widespread changes in social, political, and economic conditions. In this paper I use data from the Human Mortality Database (HMD) United States Mortality DataBase (USMDB), the Japanese Mortality Database (JMD), and the Australian Human Mortality Database (AHMD) to calculate working-age life expectancy (? _40 e?_25) from 1971 to 2019 at the national and subnational level. I present long-term and short-term trends in ? _40 e?_25 and I also show how the range and coefficient of variation for ? _40 e?_25 have changed over time. In the long-term national ? _40 e?_25 has increased. However, in the short-term US improvements have stalled and even shown some yearly declines. At the subnational level of the US? _40 e?_25 has declined since the year 2000 in one region, five divisions, and 34 states. Trends in the range and coefficient of variation also suggests that ? _40 e?_25 in the US faces markedly different challenges than in Australia and Japan.

Keywords: Mortality and Longevity

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