Although the French are still living longer and longer, life expectancy only increased by 0.1 year at birth between 2017 and 2018. In question: cancers and seasonal flu.
In the 18th century, the life expectancy of the French was 30 years. Today, it is around 80 years old. If the progression is very important, it is nowadays much slower, according to the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), which publishes a study in Populations and Societies based on figures fromInsee.
For five years, it has increased by only one and a half months per year for men, and only one month for women. Between 2017 and 2018, life expectancy at birth only increased by 0.1 years for women (85.4 years) and men (79.5 years).
The flu kills 20,000 people every year
The first cause of this slowdown in the increase in life expectancy is the flu. In fact, for the past three years, we have been experiencing particularly deadly winters. Each year, about 20,000 elderly people die from the disease. Currently, the peak of the epidemic has been reached in all regions of metropolitan France, according to the weekly newsletter of Public Health France published on February 27. About 4,100 deaths are already attributable to circulating flu viruses. According to Gilles Pison, author of the study and associate researcher at INED, when seasonal flu epidemics “are deadly like those of recent years, they reduce life expectancy at birth by 0.1 to 0.3 year”.
Women, cancer and tobacco
Moreover, the fight against cancer does not seem to have the expected effect on the life expectancy of the French. The repercussions are even more “spectacular” concerning the fight against cardiovascular diseases carried out since the 1970s. The mortality rate from cancer among women has stagnated for a few years, whereas it is continuously falling among men. “One of the reasons is the rise in smoking in the 1950s to 1980s in generations of women who are 50 or older today. They suffer the consequences decades later in the form of a rise in tobacco-related cancers” , says Gilles Pison.
It should be noted that it is not only in France that the increase in life expectancy is progressing more slowly than before. This trend is actually observed in the countries of Northern and Western Europe, again according to INED. Gilles Pison believes that it is now necessary to engage in “new fields of struggle such as neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, etc.) and medical and social innovations”.
