This chapter describes the health status of EU citizens, including recent trends in life expectancy, the main causes of death, health inequalities by gender and socioeconomic status, and the occurrence of communicable and chronic diseases.
Life expectancy now reaches 81 years on average across EU countries, but the gains have slowed down markedly in several Western European countries in recent years, with even some reductions in certain years. This appears to have been driven by a slowdown in the rate of reduction of deaths from circulatory diseases and periodical increases in mortality rates among elderly people due partly to bad flu seasons in some years.
The main causes of deaths across EU countries remain circulatory diseases (over 1 900 000 deaths in 2015) and cancers (1 320 000 deaths), which together account for over 60% of all deaths.
Large inequalities in life expectancy persist not only by gender (women still live nearly 5½ years more than men on average), but also by socioeconomic status. On average across EU countries, 30-year-old men with a low education level can expect to live about 8 years less than those with a university degree or the equivalent. The “education gap” among women is smaller, at about 4 years. Large inequalities also exist in how people rate their health: nearly 80% of adults in the highest income group report to be in good health across EU countries, compared with about 60% of people in the lowest income group.
Communicable diseases, such as measles, hepatitis B and many others, pose major threats to the health of European citizens, although vaccination can efficiently prevent these diseases. 13 475 cases of measles were reported across the 30 EU/EEA countries from May 2017 to May 2018, up by nearly 60% over the preceding 12-month period. But in most countries where vaccination coverage is high, very few cases of measles were reported.