Life expectancy in Brazil up, mortality down

Brazilians’ life expectancy went from 75.8 to 76 years from 2016 to 2017—an increase of three months and 11 dys. The figure was published Thursday (Nov. 29) by the government’s statistics institute IBGE.

According to the survey, life expectancy rose from 72.2 years in 2016 to 72.5 years in 2017 among men, and from 79.4 to 79.6 years among women.

IBGE Scientist Marcio Minamiguchi said Brazil is likely to align with developed countries. “We’ve got a certain amount of fat to burn when it comes to life expectancy. In Brazil, we tend to converge towards the level of developed countries, which are somewhere near 83 years. It’s still a long way to go, but if we think some countries are near 50, we see we’re closer to this superior level.”

The expansion is likely to become more and more slow,  Minamiguchi said, since the leap seen in the past came as a result of a sharp reduction in child mortality.

“Originally, gains were brought about by a lower morality rate among the young ones, due to the very nature of deaths. It’s something that doesn’t require major technological strides, like the awareness that children must be giving drinking water,” he added.

In the last 77 years, the life expectancy of the average Brazilian soared 30.5 years. In 1940, life expectancy stood at 45.5 years—42.9 for men, 48.3 for women—as per data from IBGE.