Exam 2 Study Guide General differences in life expectancies in MDR versus LDR countries Page 126 129 In MDR countries civil registration is the dominant system for counting deaths During the rapid MDR mortality transition taking a little more than a century life expectancy at birth grew by more than 50 Such a demographic event was unprecedented in world history LDR countries have even less complete death registration Over the past 60 years LDR countries have lengthened life expectancy by almost 24 years to levels approaching those of the MDRs in 1950 LDR mortality declines are more likely to vary directly with the level of economic development across and within countries Main difference between LDR and MDR is still over 10 years life expectancy but back in 1950 this difference was even greater over 25 years of life In the past half century LE has risen by almost 25 years for LDRs as a whole Still vary much more with respect to mortality than MDRS The difference between sub Saharan Africa and Central America in LE is over 25 years Africans have the lowest LE Countries with the highest mortality rates are not catching up with others LDRs have had later mortality transitions yet have gained some ground in catching up The difference in LE between LDR and MDR countries is still over 10 years but it used The LDRs are even more different from one another than the MDRs during their with MDR countries to be 25 years in 1950 transitions High mortality LDR countries vs Low mortality LDR countries Sub Saharan Africa and HIV AIDS epidemic Page 129 147 70 of the world s HIV AIDS cases are located in Africa contraction rates are growing rapidly in many other parts of the world predominantly central Asia and Eastern Europe Most measures of regional mortality now distinguish between high mortality LDRs such as sub Saharan Africa and low mortality LDRs such as East Asia New mortality threats such as HIV AIDS have heavily impacted some less developed countries and will mean significant delay in LDR mortality declines Trends in life expectancy race gender etc Can be made at any age Predominating opinion is that reaching an average of LE past age 85 or so is beyond the limits of our biological capacity Others speculate that there is no finite limit to human longevity Age and sex patterns do vary from one disease to the next Women get sicker men die quicker Definitions of life span longevity and life expectancy Longevity is the age at which one dies the length of an individual life Life expectancy is a hypothetical figure the average mean number of years yet to be lived by people attaining a given age according to a given life table If the age is unspecified it is assumed zero in which case life expectancy means life expectancy at birth Life span the maximum amount of time a person can live for example humans is approximately 122 years Life tables Page 123 124 154 what goes into a life table age specific death rate proportion dying etc Demographers use life tables for tracing such imaginary mortality histories There are some important features in life tables and life expectancy figures that result from them 1 Everything in the table is generated from the schedule of age specific death rates 2 The mortality assumptions employed in constructing any given life table are hypothetical and probably unrealistic 3 Life expectancy statements can be made for any age Epidemiologic transition Mortality Transition Epidemiological transition changes in MDR mortality and life expectancy during the MDR era Can divide into 3 segments 1 a pretransitional segment of high mortality before 1850 2 a transitional segment characterized by a decline in epidemic and infectious diseases characterized by degenerative and human made diseases 3 1850 1950 late transition segment 1950 present Years of life lost a particular illness or cause cause We can estimate how many more years people might have lived if they had not died from This gives us the average personal cost in lost years lived for those who died from the Early epidemiologic studies that were important to health changes HIV AIDS Tobacco related mortality smoking is the single largest preventable cause of mortality worldwide and is overall the second major killer in the world In MDRs smoking began first with men and then 30 years later became popular with woman Popular in France with woman Smoking has declined in the US UK Australia and Canada but continues to dominate Europe especially Eastern Europe In LDRs the percentage of deaths caused by tobacco is quickly rising By 2020 it is expected to surpass deaths by HIV AIDs Obesity related mortality Both LCDs and MDRs surfer from unhealthy diets Poor diets in LDCs primarily manifest themselves in the form of undernourishment and obesity has become a growing concern throughout the developed world By average over a billion people living in MDCs are overweight today and the average number of annual deaths is about a half million just in North America and Western Europe alone Obesity is rising in countries such as Argentina Mexico South Africa Egypt Kuwait and Turkey In the United State it is now estimated that obesity will cut the life expectancy at birth by as much as 5 years Difference between morbidity and mortality and their relationship Epidemiology and control of diseases in a population a branch of medical science that deals with the incidence distribution While related morbidity and mortality can follow different paths and aren t always historical records including physician records skeletal remains and Sources of data clearly intertwined public health records Historical Morbidity Issues Malnutrition posed a major threat to the health of pretransition and transitional populations Major causes of death Page 149 Immediate causes of death those that finally brought about the event proximate nonproximate distal death only in the sense that they increased the likelihood of experiencing one of the proximate causes causes of death are less immediate causes that contribute to the Thought of as biological versus cultural Fecundity the Biological Component A fecund person can produce children an infecund sterile person cannot Couples who have tried unsuccessfully for at least 12 month to conceive a child are usually called infertile by physicians The 2002 National Survey of Family Growth NSFG showed that 7 of American couples where there wife was aged 15 44 are infecund infertile by that criterion Trends in childbearing in the