The increase in life expectancy has slowed down since 2011, according to a study published in The Lancet Public Health. The authors believe the food we eat, physical inactivity, and obesity are primarily to blame. England had the biggest slowdown in life expectancy of all the countries studied.
Given these results, the authors defend the need to prioritise healthier lifestyles in our younger years to extend our old age. They also urge governments to invest in bold public health initiatives.
“Advances in public health and medicine in the 20th Century meant that life expectancy in Europe improved year after year. But this is no longer the case. From 1990 to 2011, reductions in deaths from cardiovascular diseases and cancers continued to lead to substantial improvements in life expectancy,” said Prof Nick Steel from UEA’s Norwich Medical School. “But decades of steady improvements finally slowed around 2011, with marked international differences. We found that deaths from cardiovascular diseases were the primary driver of the reduction in life expectancy improvements between 2011–19. Unsurprisingly, the Covid pandemic was responsible for decreases in life expectancy seen between 2019–21. After 2011, major risks such as obesity, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol either increased or stopped improving in almost all countries. Better cholesterol and blood pressure treatments have not been enough to offset the harms from obesity and poor diets.”
The team evaluated data from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)’s Global Burden of Disease 2021, the most comprehensive research to quantify health loss across places and over time. It includes the work of nearly 12,000 collaborators from more than 160 countries and territories. They compared life expectancy, causes of death, and population exposure to risk factors across Europe between 1990 and 2011, 2011 and 19, and 2019 and 21.
This study includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.
Despite these results, the team believes we still haven’t reached a biological ceiling for longevity.
“Life expectancy for older people in many countries is still improving, showing that we have not yet reached a natural longevity ceiling. Life expectancy mainly reflects mortality at younger ages, where we have lots of scope for reducing harmful risks and preventing early deaths,” said Prof Steel. “Comparing countries, national policies that improved population health were linked to better resilience to future shocks. Countries like Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Belgium held onto better life expectancy after 2011 and saw reduced harms from major risks for heart disease, helped by government policies.”
“In contrast,” added the researcher, “England and the other UK nations fared worst after 2011 and also during the Covid pandemic, and experienced some of the highest risks for heart disease and cancer, including poor diets. This suggests that stronger government policies are needed to reduce major health risks including obesity, poor diet, and low physical activity – to improve population health over the long term.”
“These results are a cause for concern, especially here in the UK, but also some hope. We should be concerned because many European countries, including the UK, are showing such poor progress but hopeful because addressing the underlying causes of major illnesses appears to be effective if only improvements in the key risks can be sustained,” said Prof John Newton, from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at the University of Exeter.
Steel N te al. (2025) Changing life expectancy in European countries 1990–2021: a subanalysis of causes and risk factors from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021. The Lancet Public Health, Volume 10, Issue 3, e172 – e188