Life expectancy in Brazil reaches 76.6 years, says IBGE

The life expectancy at birth in Brazil increased in 2024 to 76.6 years, according to information released on Friday (28) by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). The forecast for men is lower, at 73.3 years, than for women, at 79.9 years. The total figure exceeds last year’s indicator of 76.4 years, with 2.5 months more than in 2023, and maintains the recovery after the period marked by the increase in deaths caused by Covid-19. The institute calculates life expectancy based on population projections, which are based on the data obtained in each Demographic Census. For 2024, the projected population was 212.6 million. Infant mortality rate, which calculates the probability of a newborn not reaching the first year of life, was 12.3 deaths per 1,000 births. This indicator also decreased compared to the previous year’s data, which showed 12.5 deaths, and currently represents a fraction of the 146.6 deaths per 1,000 births in the country in 1940. According to the IBGE, this reduction is associated with vaccination campaigns and other health actions, such as the work of community agents and programs for infant nutrition, among others, as well as prenatal care and breastfeeding, increases in income, education, and sanitation coverage in households. The estimates are part of the 2024 Mortality Tables, which take into account population data from the Demographic Census for the previous year and statistics from the SIM (Mortality Information System) of the Ministry of Health. A known phenomenon, male excess mortality was also verified in census data, according to deaths reported by residents of households visited by the IBGE. It is well known that men are more exposed to violent deaths, such as homicides and traffic accidents. In addition, lifestyle habits also influence the excess male deaths. The projections released on Friday indicate that at 20 years old, men have a 4.1 times higher chance of not reaching 25 years old compared to women. This difference was not recorded in 1940, according to the IBGE, and could also be explained by the rapid urbanization process and the formation of metropolises in the country, which increased mortality rates of young men in the 1980s. These data provide estimates of life expectancy for ages up to 80 years old. The information is used, for example, for calculating the actuarial factor for retirement benefits. In the world, more people are reaching the age of one hundred. According to the UN Population Division, around 588,000 people on the planet celebrated their 100th birthday last year. The global average life expectancy is 73 years, and the UN projects it to reach 77 years by 2050. A survey by researchers with global data conducted for the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), based in the United States, found that Covid caused the average life expectancy of people on the planet to decrease by 1.6 years in the first two years of the pandemic (2020 and 2021). The population of Brazil is expected to start to decline in 2042, according to IBGE projections. The agency expects the number of inhabitants to grow to a peak of 220.43 million in 2041 and then start to decrease. The decline is expected to intensify in the following decades, bringing the population to less than 200 million in 2070 (199.2 million).