Life expectancy of people in different centuries to the present day.

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People's life expectancy is an important indicator of the standard of living in general. It is directly related to such factors as the development of medicine, the welfare of the people, and the environment. Over the past 10 years, Russia has seen an increase in life expectancy, but the COVID-19 pandemic has had a detrimental effect on this positive trend. In this article we will talk about how life expectancy has changed in the Russian Federation in recent years, compare the situation in different regions and understand why women live longer than men.

What is the average life expectancy in Russia in 2021?

According to Rosstat forecasts, life expectancy in the Russian Federation in 2021 was expected to be 73 years. However, the global pandemic has made adjustments to the expected scenario and the actual duration at the end of 2021 fell to 71.1 years (compared to 73.3 years in 2019). Taking this into account, the forecast for 2021 has been revised. It is now expected that the average life expectancy in Russia in 2021 will be 71.7 years .

What affects life expectancy?

What other factors, besides new viruses, influence the life expectancy of the population? According to WHO, the following circumstances are of great importance:

• genetics (15-20%);
• conditions and lifestyle of people (50-55%);
• state of the environment (20-25%);
• level of medical care (10-15%).

As you can easily see, the biggest influence is lifestyle. In Russian statistics one can see very clear confirmation of this: 10 years of growth in average life expectancy in Russia coincided with a ten-year decline in the consumption of alcoholic beverages.

From 2010 to 2020, the amount of alcohol consumed per capita in Russia decreased by half - from 18 liters per year to 9.5. PHOTO: unsplash.com

Living conditions, of course, also include the level of income of the population. People in high-income countries live about 16 years longer than in low-income countries.

Why does life expectancy differ between men and women?

Speaking about average life expectancy, one cannot fail to mention gender differences. Women live longer than men. Not only in Russia - all over the world. In Russia, the gap between the life expectancy of men and women reaches 10 years. In 2019, women lived to an average of 78 years of age, while men only lived to age 68 .

In developed European countries, the gender difference is much smaller and is only 2–3 years. The current situation can be explained by differences in the lifestyle mentioned above:

• Men visit doctors less often and generally pay less attention to their health.
• Bad habits such as smoking and drinking alcohol are more common among men.
• Women more often resort to healthy eating, while men prefer fatty foods.
• Women's bodies produce more estrogen, which protects against cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death in the 21st century.

Scientists believe that if behavioral differences are excluded and only biological ones are taken into account, the difference in average life expectancy between men and women will be only 1-2 years. PHOTO: unsplash.com

How has life expectancy changed over the years?

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At the end of the 19th century, people in the Russian Empire lived only up to 31 - 33 years old. In the 30s of the last century, the average life expectancy of Russians was already 43 years. The increase in the period of existence during that period was associated with the creation of a system of free and publicly accessible medicine, a significant increase in the number of hospitals and doctors. Over the 30 years to the 60s, life expectancy increased by more than one and a half times, reaching 68 years. Until the early 90s, this figure fluctuated in the range of 67-69, but in 1994 it fell to a record 63.7. Such a “failure” overtook not only Russia - many countries of the former USSR reacted in this way to the difficult time of change. It was possible to return to Soviet indicators only in 2008-2010. Over the next 9 years, the figure steadily crawled up, reaching 73 in 2021.

Since the 1990s, life expectancy has increased in 96% of countries. The global average is currently 71 years.

Elephant turtle, 250 years old

The Galapagos tortoise, also known as the elephant tortoise, is the largest tortoise that has survived to this day. However, this might not have happened, since in the 19th century European sailors used these reptiles as food supplies for long voyages, thus destroying about 200,000 individuals. In captivity, the Galapagos (elephant) tortoise lives for about 170 years, but there are cases where the age of individual individuals was more than a quarter of a century.

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Russia's place in the world in terms of average life expectancy

According to WHO data for 2021, Russia took 96th place . The first 10 places are occupied by Japan (84.5 years), Switzerland (84 years), the Republic of Korea (83.5 years), Singapore (83.3 years), Spain (83.3 years), Cyprus (83.1 years) ), Australia (83.1 years), Italy (83 years), Israel (82.6 years), Norway (82.6 years).

Among the CIS countries, Russia was overtaken by Armenia (62nd place), Kyrgyzstan (86th place) and Kazakhstan (88th place).

In 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin identified increasing life expectancy as a priority for the Russian Government. According to the plan, by 2030 the average life expectancy should reach 80 years , and Russia should enter the top 20 of the ranking.

To achieve this goal, the Cabinet of Ministers approved state programs aimed at increasing the coverage of Russians with preventive medical examinations, promoting and creating conditions for a healthy lifestyle, developing public health infrastructure, etc.

Greenland shark, 300 years old

Like the bowhead whale, the bowhead shark leads a very measured lifestyle in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, has no natural enemies and, according to some data, can live to be 300 years old. It is noteworthy that puberty in this fish occurs at the age of about 150 years and even later.

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Life expectancy in Russia by region in 2021

However, the difference between the regions of the Russian Federation is much more serious than the difference between states. The highest figure in the country is in Ingushetia - 81 years , 10 years more than the Russian average. And the lowest - 65 years - was recorded in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug . A gap of 16 years within one country! It is expected that the North Caucasus Federal District has become the subject of “long-livers” in the Russian Federation.

Life expectancy by region of Russia in 2021. Rosstat data.

Notes

1. World Bank data for 2021 for both sexes, rounded: Russia - 73 years, USA - 79 years, Germany - 81, Japan - 84. [1]
2. For 50 provinces of European Russia.
3. For the European part of the RSFSR.
4. ↑ 4,04,14,24,34,44,54,64,7 For 2003—2010 indicators were calculated using the population recalculated taking into account the results of the 2010 All-Russian Population Census.
5. Starting from 2014, data taking into account the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol.
6. This section is almost entirely borrowed from this forum thread khk.ru.

Forecast: Life expectancy in the coming years and the impact of COVID-19

The life expectancy indicator is compiled taking into account the mortality rate in all age groups. It is not surprising that COVID-19, which killed 162,249 thousand people between April and December 2021, has taken its toll. The pre-Covid forecast of Rosstat, published in March 2021, looks like this:

Life expectancy in Russia.
Rosstat data. However, the Government's Unified National Development Goals Plan 2024 forecast, based on the impact of the pandemic, offers different figures:

• 72,3 in 2022;
• 72,9 in 2023;
• 73,6 in 2024.

Will this forecast come true or not? Future will tell!

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Elephant, 86 years old

An Asian (aka Indian) elephant can easily live for about 60-70 years, especially considering that an adult does not have natural enemies in its habitat (except for homo sapiens, of course). In captivity, elephants live even longer; the record is 86 years, which an elephant lived in one of the Chinese zoos. This makes the Asian elephant the longest living land mammal (again, excluding humans).

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How long can we live

The study's findings contradict a previous, much-discussed study that suggested people would live to a maximum age of 115 years. The researchers speculate that mortality rates may be flattening for a number of reasons: perhaps the genetically weak tend to die first. Or perhaps very old people age at the cellular level at such a slow rate that it becomes easier to repair damage to their cells.

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Different opinions

Until now, debates continue in the scientific community about the existence of a maximum human life expectancy. A year ago, researchers from McGill University in Montreal presented a report in which scientists expressed their objections to the fact that human life expectancy reaches a limit at about 115 years.

One of the scientists involved in the study, Siegfried Hekimi, a senior developmental biologist at McGill, said the statistics don't tell the whole story, so based on these data, it's not true that you can't live much longer than the scientists say. .

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From the Middle Ages to the present

There were also plenty of long-livers in Asia; Chinese chronicles indicate different ages, from 300 years of Lao Tzu to 1200 years of Guan Chengzi. In Japan everything was somewhat simpler. In 1675, a meeting between the first minister and one of the oldest inhabitants of the country, the peasant Mamie, who was 193, was documented. A.S. Pushkin wrote that he had the opportunity to meet a Cossack who was 160 years old; he was even a participant in the uprising of Stepan Razin.

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In Colombia, a postage stamp was issued in honor of Javier Pereira, who lived to be 169 years old, on his 167th birthday. 152-year-old Mahmud Bagir oglu Eyvazov (1808-1960) lived the longest in the USSR. Of course, many of these stories are questionable. But what does science say about this?