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Life expectancy, a fictitious but very useful calculation

Update by Chloé Tavan of a blog post initially Life expectancy published in January 2022 and written by Isabelle Robert-Bobée

Life expectancy is the international reference indicator for summarizing mortality conditions in a given year. It corresponds to the average age at which a fictitious generation would die if it experienced, Life expectancy throughout its life, the age-specific mortality rates observed in the year in question. It is therefore neither the average age at which people born in the year in question will die nor the average age of people who died in that year.

Life expectancy is a “fictitious

Age at death, but its strength is that it does malaysia phone number library not depend on the age structure of the population. It is therefore the most suitable indicator for comparing mortality conditions over time, but also over space or between populations.

Life expectancy is by construction a short-term indicator. While the increase may even be greater we must be careful not to overinterpret its cyclical fluctuations, as during particular episodes such as the Covid-19 health crisis, its long-term developments are valuable for shedding light on demographic prospects, particularly in the context of population projections.

As at the beginning of each year

INSEE has just published its latest demographic germany cell number report . This report provides an overview of changes in the number of inhabitants residing in France, as well as fertility and mortality over the past year. In 2024, life expectancy at birth will be 85.6 years for women and 80.0 years for men: compared to 2023, it is stable for women and slightly up for men (+0.1 years). It had fallen sharply in 2020 due to the Covid-19 epidemic (it had then reached 85.1 years for women and 79.1 years for men) and remained at comparable levels in 2021 and 2022, years still marked by high excess mortality (Blanpain, 2023). Life expectancy then recovered in 2023. How can we interpret these figures? But first, what does life expectancy mean? And why use such an indicator.

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