Stalling life expectancy trends in Europe and decomposition analysis of mortality data

Life expectancy (LE) is an important population health metric over the life course. LE has increased significantly, over the past two centuries but has showed signs of slowing recently in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Several drivers have been suggested to be causing the slowdown, including slowing improvements in cardiovascular mortality. We set out to investigate trends in LE across Europe from 1990-2019, and how deaths from different causes have contributed to annual average change in LE across two time periods: 2007-2009 to 2012-2014 and 2012-2014 to 2017-2019.