National Institute of Population and Social Security Research

Foreign Scholar Lecture Series

"Divergence and convergence in life expectancy. A new approach to health transition"


Date and time: 14:00 - 15:30, October 17th (Thursday), 2013

Place: IPSS Meeting Room No.4, 6th floor, Hibiya Kokusai Building, 2-2-3 Uchisaiwai-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo MAP
(TEL 03-3595-2984)


Lecturer: Dr. France Mesle (Institut national d'etudes demographiques)

Abstract:
While the entire planet is now benefiting from progress in health, inequalities are still large. Up to the 1970s, it was believed that life expectancies across the world would converge towards an absolute upper limit. Faster progress in the countries that lagged furthest behind would gradually bring them into line with the world leaders. In the last four decades, however, this remarkable convergence has been held back for several reasons. First, some developing countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, have fallen behind because their life expectancy has increased more slowly or has even decreased as a result of the AIDS epidemic. Second, among industrialized countries, Eastern Europe was afflicted by a severe and prolonged health crisis, with life expectancy that has stagnated or even declined since the mid 1960s. Last, on a more positive note, life expectancy in the most advanced countries has continued its upward trend, reaching levels that were previously thought to be unattainable (83 years in Japan in 2010).

The "health transition" is by no means a steady, onward process. Thanks to a detailed analysis of cause-of-death trends, it is possible to characterize different waves of progress. Each of these waves corresponds to the emergence of new approaches to combat disease and death which are of immediate benefit to some populations, while others lose out because access to innovation is slow. It is the very fact that a new wave of progress may emerge at any moment, even before the effects of previous one have been fully felt, that rules out the perspective of convergence.


*Presentation and discussion were given in English.
メレ氏1 メレ氏2 メレ氏3




---