Mid-life mortality trends in the UK: is the US an anomaly?

Jennifer Dowd & Andrea Tilstra, University of Oxford

(Project no. 1010822)

Decreases in life expectancy in the U.S. have continued for a 3rd year, with "deaths of despair" heavily implicated in scholarly and popular explanations for these trends. These increases in mortality have been focused in certain age and education groups in the US. There is also evidence that life expectancy gains may be levelling off in the UK, suggesting these mortality dynamics could reflect a more general demographic phenomenon. This project will use the LS data to investigate mortality trends in the UK and compare them to rising mortality rates in the US.