Where do the oldest people really live in Europe? Behind the classifications by country which are often circulated, another map emerges, much finer. It shows that life expectancy is no longer increasing at the same rate everywhere and that some regions are gaining several months of life each year while others seem to be stuck.
A large study carried out by the National Institute for Demographic Studies, the German BiB and the CNRS, published in the scientific journal Nature Communicationsfollowed 450 regions in 13 Western European countries, or nearly 400 million inhabitants, between 1992 and 2019. It tells how a Two-speed Europe life expectancywhere the address on the map weighs more and more heavily.
An aging Europe, but two trajectories since 2005
Between 1992 and 2005, the picture looked rather rosy. Life expectancy was increasing sharply in Western Europe, by around 2.5 months per year for women and 3.5 months for men. Lagging regions gained even more, up to 4 months per year for men in the 1990s, quickly reducing the gap with the most advanced territories.
From the mid-2000s, the scenario changed. In 2018-2019, the gains are only around one month of life expectancy per year for women and two months for men, and already disadvantaged regions see their progress drop by around 40% compared to the previous period. The financial crisis of 2008 accentuated this divide, by concentrating qualified jobs and growth in a few large metropolises.
Where do we live? Pioneering regions facing lagging territories
The pioneer regions, those where people live the longest, are mainly found in northern Italy, Switzerland and several Spanish provinces. In France, Paris, Hauts-de-Seine, Yvelines, and for women in the departments around Anjou or the Swiss border, showed in 2019 nearly 83 years of male life expectancy and 87 years for women, with annual gains still sustained.
© INED/CNRS
Change between 2018 and 2019 (as a percentage) in the probability of dying between the ages of 55 and 74 for men and women.
These territories continue to gain around 2.5 months of life per year for men and 1.5 months for women, which shows that no biological ceiling is yet visible. Conversely, eastern Germany, Wallonia, several regions of the United Kingdom or Hauts-de-France for men saw their gains almost canceled out. On the map, the Europe of longevity appears cut into two clearly separated blocks.
The weak link: mortality between ages 55 and 74
To understand this shift, researchers looked closely at the age of deaths. The divide comes neither from infant mortality, which is already very low, nor from that after age 75, which continues to decline almost everywhere. It is mainly explained by the
mortality between 55 and 74 yearswhich had declined sharply in the 1990s but which is stagnating, or even rising, in large areas of Europe.
In many departments around the French Mediterranean, this mortality is increasing for women, as in a large part of Germany, while men in Hauts-de-France remain very exposed. Researchers have cited the impact of tobacco, alcohol, poor diet and economic divides since 2008.
According to the authors, “The future of longevity Europe depends less on the existence of a biological ceiling than on the collective capacity to reduce regional differences. Extrapolating recent trends, we may fear that a minority of territories will continue to push back the boundaries of life expectancy, while a majority will see progress stall.“The continued general increase in life expectancy in Europe relies less on medical advances in the most advantaged regions than on the capacity of all territories to benefit from them.