Life expectancy continues to grow around the world. A person who in the 1950s died at just 60 years of age now lives 80 years or more. Mainly they have been medical and technological advances those that have brought us here, especially in Western and developed countries. For example, today there are innumerable treatments against diseases that have managed to delay the death rate of the global population. Diet and consumption habits have also improved.
In fact, as this University of Porto study that I tried to find the factors that most influence longevity, from greater to lesser degree, what most determines how many years we are going to live is poverty, high-fat diets, smoking, drinking and an unhealthy lifestyle. There are more (such as pollution) but those are the most important. In other words, we are going to die more and more from things like diabetes, obesity, neurodegenerative, lung or kidney diseases and less and less from infectious diseases.
At an international level, in Spain we can boast of having one of the oldest populations on the planet. But within our borders, each autonomous community is a world, basically because there are many different factors, from different health characteristics, unequal income, different health administration and different competencies. Within the same country, life expectancy varies greatly from region to region.
As we can see in this map with data from the INE for 2021, the provinces with the highest life expectancy are Salamanca (84.74), Madrid, (84.64), Burgos (84.53) and Álava (84.34). At the bottom are Almería (80.48) and Cádiz (80.66). And if we count the communities, Ceuta, with an average of 78.16 years, followed by Melilla (79.4).
Another important conclusion to comment on is the great gender difference that exists. Women live, on average, more than five years (85.83) than men (80.24 years). As we have discussed in other magnet items This is a common condition all over the world and is mainly due to two factors: the greater carelessness towards their health on the part of men and, above all, to the interference of testosteronea fact that harms male mammals of all species.
In fact, the greatest difference is found between the woman from Salamanca, who endures an average of 87.89 years, and the man from Almería, who lives the least: 77.57 years on average. Also noteworthy is the difference between the north and south of Spain, where we see how GDP greatly influences life expectancy. It is not a coincidence that Extremadura, Andalusia or Melilla, which are among the poorest regions of the entire European Unionhave a lower life expectancy than the rest.
covid changed everything
While it is true that before the pandemic, life expectancy was increasing almost monotonously in most countries thanks to medical advances, Covid turned the picture upside down in 2020. The pandemic affected the health of the world population reducing life expectancy by 1.2 years that year compared to 2017. Life expectancy in Spain decreased from 80.6 to 79.4 years among men and from 85.9 to 84.8 years among women. The virus caused a significant increase in mortality in 2020 of a magnitude not seen since World War II in Western Europe.
In global terms, according to World Health Organizationglobal life expectancy is 74.2 years for women and 69.8 years for men. Spain is among the five countries with the highest life expectancy, with an average of 83.6 years. One reason could be our famous Mediterranean diet. The first: Japan (84.4 years), Switzerland (83.8 years), Singapore (83.6 years), and Italy (83.5 years).
At the bottom are mainly African countries, with very low GDP: Central African Republic (53.6 years), Lesotho (54.3 years), Chad (54.4 years), Nigeria (54.8 years) and Sierra Leone (54.8 years).
As we have told in Magnet on several occasions, the high life expectancy is directly related to the general aging of the population. Japan has reached a point of having to pay young people to go live in aging towns full of old people. Today we have 120 over 64 years for every 100 children under 16 in Spain. A trend that poses risks to economic growth and depletes public finances.
Graphics: National Institute of Statistics (INE)