Recent decline in life expectancy at birth in Slovenia

For many decades, life expectancy at birth (e0) in Slovenia has been increasing at a very rapid pace. However, in 2015, e0 declined slightly; it recovered in 2016, but fell again in 2017 for women. In the same period, a pause in declining mortality was observed in numerous developed countries worldwide. It is too early to provide a thorough analysis and firm conclusions, but we shed some light on the topic by decomposing the observed decline in Slovenia by age and cause of death. In particular, using a life table model and life expectancy decomposition technique, we analyse what cause of death for what age group contributed the most to this decline in life expectancy at birth. We show that the main reason for the recent drop in life expectancy at birth in Slovenia was higher mortality due to external causes for men of all ages and due to neoplasms for women above 60 years and men above 50 years.