Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

During the past few decades, Hong Kong has achieved a remarkable increase in life expectancy and become one of the best life expectancy records in the world. Although there have been many studies discussing the health states of Hong Kong residents, we still know very little about the growth mechanism of life expectancy improvement in Hong Kong. Our study aims to assess contributions of mortality change by age groups and selected major causes of death to the overall life expectancy growth over the period from 1987 to 2016 in Hong Kong. Decomposition methods were used to quantify the impacts of age structure and leading causes of death on the life expectancy growth in Hong Kong. Findings of the study showed that the improvement of Hong Kong life expectancy from 1987 to 2016 was mainly attributable to the declined mortality from chronic diseases of adult groups being shifted to the older population. However, this positive contribution was partly offset by the negative contribution of increase of deaths from pneumonia. Besides, the escalating prevalence of many chronic diseases among the younger age groups has caused a noticeable loss in life expectancy in recent years. In terms of external causes of death, the declining mortality of accidents has also exerted positive contribution to the health improvement in Hong Kong. Therefore, although Hong Kong has achieved significant performance in improving life expectancy, much is still needed to be done to sustain its continuous improvement.