The combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol on life-expectancy trends in Europe

Background Smoking, obesity and alcohol abuse greatly affect mortality and exhibit a distinct time dynamic, with their prevalence and associated mortality rates increasing and (eventually) declining over time. Their combined impact on secular trends in life expectancy is unknown but is relevant for understanding these trends. We therefore estimate the combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol on life-expectancy trends in Europe. Methods We used estimated national age-specific smoking-, obesity- and alcohol-attributable mortality fractions for 30 European countries by sex, 1990–2014, which we aggregated multiplicatively to obtain lifestyle-attributable mortality. We estimated potential gains in life expectancy by eliminating lifestyle-attributable mortality and compared past trends in life expectancy at birth (e0) with and without lifestyle-attributable mortality. We examined all countries combined, by region and individually. Results Among men, the combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol on e0 declined from 6.6 years in 1990 to 5.8 years in 2014, mainly due to declining smoking-attributable mortality. Among women, the combined impact increased from 1.9 to 2.3 years due to mortality increases in all three lifestyle-related factors. The observed increase in e0 over the 1990–2014 period was 5.0 years for men and 4.0 years for women. After excluding lifestyle-attributable mortality, this increase would have been 4.2–4.3 years for both men and women. Conclusion Without the combined impact of smoking, obesity and alcohol, the increase over time in life expectancy at birth would have been smaller among men but larger among women, resulting in a stable increase in e0, parallel for men and women.