A regional perspective on Italian life expectancy deceleration

Abstract

Using ISTAT period life tables, we traced annual life expectancy at birth for Italy’s macro-areas (NUTS1) and regions (NUTS2) from 1980 to 2019. An unconstrained segmented-regression search identified breakpoints clustered around 2008—the first full year of the nationwide spending freeze and the regional deficit-recovery plans—suggesting a near-simultaneous inflection across the country. Taking 2008 as a policy-salient breakpoint, we then fitted interrupted time-series models to each regional trajectory. Almost all regions showed a statistically significant post-2008 flattening for the pooled sexes, and significance held for both men and women in all but a handful of small, data-sparse territories. Where significant, the estimated slope implies regions lost 0.5–2.0 years of life expectancy progression over the ensuing decade. The slowdown was almost universally sharper for women than for men, with only three regions displaying no gender gap. The striking synchrony of the breakpoint—first across macro-areas, then across regions aligns with an exogenous, nation-wide period shock tied to the 2008 wave of health-care austerity.