Deaths of despair’ as life expectancy stagnates for under-50s

Australia has one of the highest life expectancies in the world, but like other high-income English-speaking countries such as the US and Britain, there’s a serious problem for those under 50.

A new study has found mental health-related drug use and suicide is to blame for the stagnating life expectancy of Australians under 50.

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The so-called “deaths of despair” – drug and alcohol related deaths plus suicide – along with rising obesity rates that rival the United States has seen life expectancy for Australians under 50 stagnate for the last five decades, a new study finds.

The research concludes that while Australians at older ages, especially men, are living longer, younger cohorts in Australia are falling behind many other non-English speaking high-income countries.

However under-50 life expectancy remains higher here than the US, Britain and Canada.

The paper, Faltering mortality improvements at young middle ages in high-income English-speaking countries, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, challenges previous studies that concluded Australians were generally healthier than most of their peers internationally.

Australian National University demographer and report co-author Sergey Timonin said the findings of his research were “quite surprising”.

“We already knew the US and UK had a problem with life expectancy for under-50s, but we didn’t expect to see Australia in this young and middle-aged group,” Dr Timonin said.

The paper confirms that Australia overall continues to have one of the highest life expectancies in the world, currently 81.2 years for men and 85.3 for women.

Recent Australian Bureau of Statistics data puts Australia third on the international life expectancy charts, behind only Monaco and Japan. Australian men are second in the world, behind Monaco, with women sixth. Neither the US or Britain is in the top 20.

In the past 50 years, average life expectancy for Australian men has increased by almost 14 years, and by 11.2 years for women.

It has stalled, however, for young and early middle-age groups, more so than in high-income non-English speaking countries, because of factors including suicide, drug and alcohol-related behaviours, and obesity.

“Each of the English-speaking countries (including Australia) has experienced a marked mortality disadvantage for cohorts born since the early 1970s relative to the average of the other high-income countries,” Dr Timonin said.

“External causes of death and substance use disorders were found to be the largest contributors to the observed disadvantage at these ages. Recreational drug use and risky behaviours are mostly related to mentally driven disorders,” he said.

Impacts on mortality among under-50s was more pronounced in males than females, the study found.

Another factor the study found contributed to the stagnating life expectancy for younger people was obesity, with Australia reporting levels comparable to the US and considerably above other high-income, non-English-speaking countries.

“The USA and Australia have some of the highest adult obesity prevalence rates among HICs (high-income countries), which was suggested to be a key factor in the recent stalling of mortality from cardiovascular diseases in both populations,” the paper says.

It said the differing results between high-income, English-speaking countries and other high-income nations was evidence that policy measures should be explored to “reduce inequity and structural disadvantage, address obesity, firearms and violence, and support mental health and drug-related safety”.

“There is scope for English-speaking countries to improve the health of their younger populations and to halt the widening gap in mortality with other high-income countries,” Dr Timonin said.

Australia’s life expectancy fell for the first time since the mid-1990s, down slightly as a result of the high number of deaths due to Covid-19 in 2022. Around half of all deaths in Australia in 2022 had Covid-19 as a factor.

The latest Intergenerational Report released in August last year projects that across the next 40 years, the number of people aged 65 and older living in Australia will more than double.

For 85 and older, it’s triple. And there will be six times the number of centenarians by 2063 than now.

A male baby born today can expect to have 71.6 years in full health and 9.6 years in ill-health, the IGR finds. For girls, it would be 74.1 years of good health and 11.3 years of ill-health.