Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
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Comparative Study
What can lifespan variation reveal that life expectancy hides? Comparison of five high-income countries.
In most countries, life expectancy at birth (e0) has improved for many decades. Recently, however, progress has stalled in the UK and Canada, and reversed in the USA. Lifespan variation, a complementary measure of mortality, increased a few years before the reversal in the USA. To assess whether this measure offers additional meaningful insights, we examine what happened in four other high-income countries with differing life expectancy trends. ⋯ Life disparity is an additional summary measure of population health providing information beyond that signalled by life expectancy at birth alone.