According to a new study, people in other EU countries are living longer. The authors see a reason for this in the diagnosis of vascular diseases.
The old man and the bicycle: scene in Cottbus Photo: dpa
WIESBADEN afp | Germany is one of the worst performing countries in Western Europe when it comes to life expectancy and is falling further behind. The gap with the rest of Europe has increased steadily over the past two decades, as shown in a study published on Wednesday by the Federal Institute for Population Research (BIB) and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research.
While in 2000 Germany was around 0.7 years behind the average life expectancy at birth in the rest of Western Europe, this gap increased to 1.7 years in 2022. “The beginning of the 2000s marks a turning point in the dynamics of mortality evolution in Germany,” explained co-author Pavel Grigoriev from the BIB. Since then, the mortality gap between Germany and other Western European countries has “increased relatively steadily.”
Since the turn of the millennium, both West and East Germany have lost ground compared to other Western European countries. While the gap in life expectancy for men was around 0.7 years in 2000, this gap increased to 1.8 years in 2022. For women, the gap in life expectancy increased from 0.7 years in 2000 to 1.4 years today. The authors of the study grouped 13 EU countries under the term Western Europe, such as Belgium, the Netherlands and France, as well as Switzerland and Great Britain.
Risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.
Only in the first year of the pandemic, 2020, was there a short-term approximation to the Western European average for both sexes, because significantly fewer people initially died from Covid-19 in Germany.
However, mortality differs in different age groups. While the mortality rate for people under 50 in Germany is the average for Western Europe, it is significantly higher for the population over 65. Among German women, particularly those over 75, they have a higher mortality rate than their peers in other countries. There is a gap among men, especially between the ages of 55 and 74.
German researchers see it as necessary to act to increase life expectancy, especially in the case of cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, international comparisons indicate the need to catch up in the prevention and early detection of these diseases. The same applies to tobacco and alcohol prevention, as well as healthy eating.