Do Differences in Mortality across Educational Groups Explain the Stagnation in Life Expectancy Growth in England

Jesús-Daniel Zazueta Borboa , Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)
Leo van Wissen, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and University of Groningen
Fanny Janssen, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and University of Groningen

Growth in life expectancy at birth has stagnated since 2010 in England and Wales. Prior research suggests that the stagnation in life expectancy improvement is related with an increase in mortality at young ages after 2008. We used data from the ONS Longitudinal Study, from 2003 to 2017 to estimate trends in life expectancy at age 30 (e30) at the national level under different counterfactual scenarios, considering previous (2003-10) education-specific mortality improvements. Our analysis revealed that if the mortality conditions from 2003-2010 of all three educational attainment groups had continued into 2010-2017, e30 would have increased by 1.49 and 1.96 years for males and females respectively in the 2010-2017 period, whereas the observed increase was only 0.81 years for males and 0.55 for females. When looking at counterfactual scenarios by educational attainment groups, we can assess the contribution of each educational group to national life expectancy trends. We observed that after 2010, the mortality trends of the low-educated contributed the most to the observed stagnation in life expectancy growth. Our preliminary results revealed that after 2010 mortality conditions in England and Wales have worsened unevenly across different educational groups in different age groups, this highlights that health inequalities have negative consequences on life expectancy improvements.

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 Presented in Session 35. Social Inequalities in Mortality