LIFE expectancy in Spain has shot up to 83 years and four months, making it the highest in the EU, the second-highest on the European continent and the third-highest in the world.
Women now live to an average of 86 in Spain – an increase of two years and seven-and-a-half months since the year 2002 – and men live to 80 years and five months, an increase of four years and two-and-a-half months in that time.
Overall, life expectancy in Spain has risen by three-and-a-half years, and is expected to be just short of 86 or even 87 years and five months within the next two decades, depending upon which study is most accurate and to what extent the main causes of non-accidental death from anything other than old age can be reduced.
A breakdown by gender is not given for Spain's forecast life expectancy by the year 2040, but given the typical difference of around five-and-a-half years between them, it could be that Spanish women will be living to an average of 90 or more within the next 20 years.
According to the most recent study on life expectancy by the University of Washington State, in Seattle, aside from old age, accidents or violent crime, the top 10 causes of death in the first world are ischaemic heart failure – where the arteries narrow, preventing blood from pumping – Alzheimer's, lung cancer, strokes (both ischaemic, or a reduction in blood flow to the brain, and haemorrhagic, or an excessive bleed on the brain), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), often referred to as being 'broken-winded', bowel and colon cancer, breast cancer, suicide, and other cardiovascular and respiratory conditions, in that order.
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