Original scientific paper
Mortality and Life Expectancies in EU Acceding Countries – Long-term Outlook
Nikola Tcholakov
Abstract
The European Union has just expanded to include ten new countries. Another two, Bulgaria and Romania, are expected to join in 2007. Croatia and Turkey are strong favourites to follow suit soon. All these add new dimensions to the demography of the Union, because the acceding countries show different levels and patterns of mortality and life expectancy. So far the EU15 had a relatively coherent mortality behaviour with high life expectancies and low infant and child mortalities. The new members add some variation in all indicators and acceding Bulgaria and Romania should enlarge the diversity even more. It is not easy to relate all differences in particular factors such as history, religion, nationality, ethnicity, tradition, political influence, climate and ecological conditions, economic growth and social welfare, income and living standard, healthcare and hygiene, etc. The new EU members and the acceding countries have followed diverse historical paths in the last couple of centuries and mortality indicators show some similarities along with many significant differences. Following the EC and EUROSTAT long-term mortality scenarios this paper examines the prospects of mortality and life expectancy in the EU after the enlargement and tries to draft some main directions of development. As it appears, four countries fit well into the current EU mainstream – Malta, Cyprus, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Croatia is not very far, despite the political turmoil in the country in 1990s. Poland, Slovakia and Hungary reveal some deficiencies in life expectancy, but it is the Baltic countries that have extremely low life expectancies for males. Bulgaria and Romania must overcome their very high infant and child mortalities in a relatively short time and it is difficult to expect that they will soon join the EU main trend. Turkey with an even higher infant mortality is projected to soon close the divide with these two countries and all three should try hard to reach a one-digit level of infant mortality.
Keywords
mortality; life expectancy; European Union; acceding countries; population projection
Hrčak ID:
5650
URI
Publication date:
26.6.2005.
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