Women in Spain live to nearly 86 on average: Life expectancy rose even during recession, study confirms

Both organisations are researching the effects of the financial crisis on how long people live – a period of recession and relative poverty lasting from approximately late 2008 until around 2013.

The study, however, takes figures from 2010 to 2018 inclusive – as yet, statistics for the last full year, 2019, are not available.

Data show that the highest life expectancy increase was in the Spanish-owned city-province of Ceuta on the northern Moroccan coast, directly opposite Gibraltar, rising by two years and three months from the start of the last decade – but, curiously, its near-neighbour Melilla, a Spanish enclave immediately south of Almería and close to the Algerian border, was the only region in Spain where life expectancy fell in that time, by 0.67 years.

The Balearic Islands saw the second-highest rise, by 1.55 years, with the greatest leap seen on the mainland being in Asturias, where inhabitants now live 1.45 years longer, followed by Madrid (1.44).

It was, in fact, the capital and its wider region where the highest life expectancy was recorded in the most recent figures to date, in 2018 – it had risen to 84 years and just under 10 months, on average, across both genders, even though the difference is usually around three years with women's being the highest.

The land-locked northern region of Navarra was second with a life expectancy of 84 years and just over two months, followed by Castilla y León (83 years and 11 months), and the Basque Country, at 83 years and eight months.

Ceuta (80 years and nine months), Melilla (80 years and just under six months), and Andalucía (81 years and 10 months) were the lowest.

Women live on average to age 85 years and nearly 11 months, and men to 80 years and just under six months, although the females who live the longest are in Madrid, reaching 87 years and nearly two months, and Navarra, at 86 years and 10 months.

This said, figures show that the national mortality rate has gone up since the middle years of the financial crisis – from 8.17 deaths per 1,000 in 2010 to 9.07 per thousand in 2018.

They were highest in Galicia (12.92 deaths per 1,000 residents), Castilla y León (12.13), and Asturias (11.82 deaths per 1,000), and the lowest were in Melilla (5.26), Ceuta (6.2), the Canary Islands (6.23) and the Greater Madrid region (7.04).

Mortality in women grew by 0.76 per 1,000 and men by 0.78 per thousand, although typically, in a period of time such as this, death rates among men would have gone up by more, and among women, by less, meaning the gap is closing.

Infant mortality has reduced – from 3.16 deaths for every 1,000 babies born alive in 2010 to 2.59 per 1,000 in 2018.

Deaths from the main non-accidental causes went down in number, although the most prevalent is still cancer – just under 1.39 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants, but down from 1.51 per 1,000 in 2010.

Some of this is because advances in cancer research and more sophisticated treatment and diagnostic techniques mean survival rates are improving and cases are being detected early enough to cure.

Heart conditions and strokes fell from 0.33 to 0.25 per 1,000, the second largest cause, whilst chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) fell from 0.177 to 0.149.

Diabetes deaths reduced from 0.11 to 0.9 per 1,000.

The two causes which have risen in prevalence – and in line with people living longer – are pneumonia and 'flu, which are rarely fatal except when complicated by pre-existing conditions or in small children or the elderly, and which rose from 0.082 to 0.099, and Alzheimer's or non-vascular dementia, rising from 0.113 to 0.12 per 1,000.

These causes were adjusted by age when calculating how many lives they claimed.

Accidental deaths, including road crashes, and non-accidental deaths from non-natural causes, such as murder and suicide, were not taken into account.

Although life expectancy has risen steadily in every consecutive year since the middle years of the financial crisis, no pattern has been revealed showing that this slowed down – or indeed, rose – when Spain was gripped by recession and mass unemployment.

Neither the ministry of health nor the INS has been able to confirm as yet whether there is any relationship on a macro scale between economic crisis and length of life.

The photograph shows Ana María Vela Rubio when she was 115 and then Spain's and Europe's oldest woman – in autumn 2017, she became the world's third-oldest person, and passed away in mid-December that year aged 116 and seven weeks.

She had one surviving child, her daughter, also called Ana, who was 90 when her mother died.