Life expectancy by standard of living - Method and mains results

In France, the disparities of life expectancy by social categories are well known. More recently, disparities have been analysed by educational levels. However, few studies focused on life expectancy by standard of living due to a lack of data. It is now possible to study life expectancy by standard of living thanks to the permanent demographic sample (EDP), which incorporates tax data.

First, we will analyse the shape of the curve for the life expectancy by standard of living. Is there a threshold above which additional standard of living is no longer associated with an increase in life expectancy ? Is the influence of standard of living different for men and women ?

Life expectancy increases with the standard of living. Thus, under the mortality conditions of 2012-2016, the life expectancy of men is 84.4 years for the richest 5% of the population and 71.7 for the poorest 5% of the population, which is thirteen years less than for the richest. For women, this gap is lower: 8 years less for the poorest than for the richest.

For people with a standard of living of 1 000 euros by month, 100 additional euros are associated with an increase in life expectancy of 0.9 year for men and 0.8 year for women. This gain is about 0.3 for men and 0.2 for women with a standard of living of 2 000 euros by month.

In France, women live longer than men (6 years on average in 2012-2016). Women live also generally longer than the richest men: the life expectancy of women among the richest 70% of the population is higher than the life expectancy of men among the richest 5% of the population. Lastly, life expectancy increases with standard of living both for people who don’t have any diploma and people with a diploma.