Men’s Mortality Decline in Lithuania: Sustainable Development or Short-term Changes?

Abstract

Lithuanian men had the lowest life expectancy among EU countries in 2015. However, since the year 2007 the country is facing the highest positive change in men’s life expectancy over the past 50 years. It is necessary to reveal what causes of deaths in different socio-demographic groups had a major impact on certain life expectancy changes. In this paper we analyse the aggregated mortality data from the Eurostat and Lithuanian Statistics databases. The analysis of the causes of death was implemented by using the de-compositional analysis method. The results show that the increase in life expectancy is determined by mortality decline due to the external causes of death and cardiovascular diseases. The record-high increase in men’s life expectancy in 2007–2015 conceals controversial changes in mortality at different stages of this period.