Reacción a "Improvements in life expectancy slowed down in many European countries between 2011 and 2021"

This article is a high-quality study, mainly due to the robustness of the civil/vital registration systems in Europe. This robustness helps to provide a complete picture of the mortality profile over 32 years, including aspects such as life expectancy at birth (the average number of years a newborn can expect to live in the future if the mortality patterns of their year of birth continue) and the contribution of different causes of death to changes in this life expectancy at birth. The part of risk factors that contribute to these causes already requires a much higher number of assumptions, and I think they are of less interest for the conclusions of the study.

The study basically shows us that, despite notable improvements in the longevity of European populations between 1990 and 2019, this improvement was not as pronounced during the second phase of that period (2011-2019). For example, for Spain, from 1990 to 2011 life expectancy at birth increased by 0.25 years each year (that is, about 5.5 years over the entire period) compared to 0.13 years during the second period (with a total of 1.17 years gained between 2011-2019). This slowdown in gains was particularly noticeable in the UK and Greece.

The study also highlights changes in life expectancy at birth during the pandemic, which we were already well aware of from other studies, so really the biggest contribution is the connection of these changes during the pandemic with what came before: a slowdown in improvements in mortality in the European population in general.

The biggest limitation, as always in these studies, is the assignment of causes of death, which always contains a degree of error. Of course, the whole analysis of the causes of these changes (blood pressure, etc.) is based on many assumptions that can be problematic.