5 ms·

Life expectancy at birth is mainly dominated by infant mortality x birth rate (which is part of why Africa is so abysmally low). It's much more interesting (an

Life expectancy at birth is mainly dominated by infant mortality x birth rate (which is part of why Africa is so abysmally low). It's much more interesting (and pretty) to look at the 3D chart of life expectancy distributions at age N. Unfortunately this is really only available for a subset of developed countries, and not even really for a lot of subpopulations within them without a lot of digging.

guard-of-terra 11y ago
It doesn't always do that. CIS countries (like Belarus, Azerbaijan and Russia) have quite low infant mortality, and yet life expectancy is second only to Africa, from the bottom of course. I'm kind of surprised seeing Iran in the same basket, why?
- nl 11y ago
  Lowering infant mortality will generally get you into the 70-80 bracket. The countries with 80+ life expectancy are those with the best and most available hospital systems and active program where they treat aging diseases. That's really only happened in the last 20 years. The USSR did very well until it collapsed, but since then life expectancy has kind of stagnated in most of the former Soviet republics (see the Gapminder link below) Iran lost a statistically significant number of people during the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980's. That's showing in the life expectancy stats. Gapminder is good for this kind of thing (You'll need to enable Flash). Watch Iran drop back when the war occurred: http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=1898$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=tiAiXcrneZrUnnJ9dBU-PAw;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=194;dataMax=96846$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=1;dataMax=96$map_s;sma=50;smi=2$cd;bd=0$inds=i103_t001800,,,,;i184_t001800,,,,;i49_t001800,,,,;i218_t001800,,, http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...,
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    "The USSR did very well until it collapsed" It didn't, life expectancy actually went backwards in Russia in 1965-1985. It stagnated for women and fell a few years for men. This is while rest of the world increased life expectancy rapidly. You can see that in your linked website. A good comparsion pair is Russia-Finland. Same expectancy and GDP in 1960, and then they begin to diverge rapidly.
    - nl 11y ago
      Hm, you are right (although in Russia/USSR it kept improving until 1970 and then fell back - see[1] for exact numbers). [2] claims it can be shown to be caused by alcohol abuse, and that an aggressive anti-alcohol campaign in the mid 1980's reversed the trend just in time for the collapse of the Soviet Union (when the campaign stopped and the gains fell away again). It's probably that bump that confused me, as it seems many others have said the same thing. [1] http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnNPA&gid=0 http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnN... [2] http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2000/HighDeathRateAmongRussianMenPredatesSovietUnionsDemise.aspx http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2000/HighDeathRateA...

guard-of-terra 11y ago

It doesn't always do that. CIS countries (like Belarus, Azerbaijan and Russia) have quite low infant mortality, and yet life expectancy is second only to Africa, from the bottom of course. I'm kind of surprised seeing Iran in the same basket, why?

nl 11y ago
Lowering infant mortality will generally get you into the 70-80 bracket. The countries with 80+ life expectancy are those with the best and most available hospital systems and active program where they treat aging diseases. That's really only happened in the last 20 years. The USSR did very well until it collapsed, but since then life expectancy has kind of stagnated in most of the former Soviet republics (see the Gapminder link below) Iran lost a statistically significant number of people during the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980's. That's showing in the life expectancy stats. Gapminder is good for this kind of thing (You'll need to enable Flash). Watch Iran drop back when the war occurred: http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=1898$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj1jiMAkmq1iMg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=tiAiXcrneZrUnnJ9dBU-PAw;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=log;dataMin=194;dataMax=96846$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=1;dataMax=96$map_s;sma=50;smi=2$cd;bd=0$inds=i103_t001800,,,,;i184_t001800,,,,;i49_t001800,,,,;i218_t001800,,, http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...,
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  "The USSR did very well until it collapsed" It didn't, life expectancy actually went backwards in Russia in 1965-1985. It stagnated for women and fell a few years for men. This is while rest of the world increased life expectancy rapidly. You can see that in your linked website. A good comparsion pair is Russia-Finland. Same expectancy and GDP in 1960, and then they begin to diverge rapidly.
  - nl 11y ago
    Hm, you are right (although in Russia/USSR it kept improving until 1970 and then fell back - see[1] for exact numbers). [2] claims it can be shown to be caused by alcohol abuse, and that an aggressive anti-alcohol campaign in the mid 1980's reversed the trend just in time for the collapse of the Soviet Union (when the campaign stopped and the gains fell away again). It's probably that bump that confused me, as it seems many others have said the same thing. [1] http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnNPA&gid=0 http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phAwcNAVuyj2tPLxKvvnN... [2] http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2000/HighDeathRateAmongRussianMenPredatesSovietUnionsDemise.aspx http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2000/HighDeathRateA...