Brazilian population's life expectancy has risen from 69.66 years, as of 1998, to 72.86 years, in 2008. Last year, the average life span for men was 69.11 years, and for women, 76.71 years.
The data were taken from the Complete Table of Mortality, issued December 1st by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and published in the Official Gazette. the Diário Oficial.
According to the IBGE, it should take some time before Brazil attains high levels such as those of Japan, Hong Kong (China), Switzerland, Iceland, Australia, France and Italy, where the average life span is higher than 81 years. According to the survey, Brazil will only reach that level around 2040.
The data show, however, that there has been significant progress, considering the life expectancy of Brazilians as of 1940 ”“ which was lower than 50 years (45.50 years).
The Complete Table of Mortality for the Brazilian population is issued on an annual basis by the IBGE since 1999 and has been used by the Brazilian Ministry of Social Welfare as one of the parameters for calculating retirement salaries, under the General Welfare Regime.
Child Mortality
Child mortality in Brazil decreased from 100 to 23.3 deaths per 1000 live births between 1970 and 2008. The data were taken from the Complete Table of Mortality survey, issued today (1st) by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (IBGE) and published in the Official Gazette.
In the last decade alone, the mortality rate was 30%. During the ten-year period, the country managed to prevent 205,000 children under 1 year of age from dying. If the rate of mortality had remained constant since 1998, Brazil would have recorded, in an 11-year period, 1,261,570 deaths of children under 1 year old, instead of the 1,055,816 deaths recorded.
The mortality rate in Brazil is now further apart from those of countries such as Afghanistan (157 deaths per 1,000 live births), Angola (117.5 per 1,000) and Sierra Leone (104.3 per 1,000). The Brazilian rate, however, is still much higher than those of Iceland (2.9 per 1,000), Singapore (3 per 1,000), Japan (3.2 per 1,000), Sweden (3.1 per 1,000) and Norway (3.5 per 1,000).
The survey also shows that, from 1998 to 2008, 68 young men aged 15 to 24 died each day in the country from external causes (traffic accidents, homicides and suicides), totaling 272,500 deaths.
ABr