29 January 2020

Life expectancy in Canada

You have probably read about a declining life expectancy in the US. "After 2010, US life expectancy plateaued and in 2014 it began reversing, dropping for three consecutive years -- from 78.9 years in 2014, to 78.6 in 2017 — www.cnn.com/2019/11/26/health/us-life-expectancy-decline-study/index.html/. The decline is attributed to drug overdoses, obesity, alcoholism and suicide. The official figures are in www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_07-508.pdf in Table 19.

Yesterday, 27 January, Statistics Canada released life tables for Canada and for each province except PEI. It shows life expectancy at birth for 2016-2018 as 82.0, the same as for 2015-2017 — an increase from 81.9 in 2013-2015. Across a five year period life expectancy increased for all ages up to 90 with an increase up to 0.3 years for those 35 to 65 years of age.

A troubling trend is a decrease in life expectancy for men in the 25-to-45 age group which StatsCan attributes to opioid deaths. 

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