The report aims to describe global and regional levels and trends in life expectancy at birth and assess the contribution of various major causes of death to differences in survival between populations. The analysis incorporates life table values for regions representing 230 countries or areas from the Population Division’s World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, as well as estimates of the distribution of deaths by cause from the World Health Organization’s Mortality estimates by cause, age and sex for the year 2008. The report provides a detailed analysis of the sex- and age-patterns of mortality that produce regional trends and differences in the levels of life expectancy at birth. In addition, the report contains a decomposition analysis to pinpoint the specific causes of death that are responsible for deficits in survival among populations of selected regions compared to the longest-lived populations in the world.
Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Understanding mortality patterns through the lenses of the demographic and epidemiological transitions -- Chapter 3. Decomposing survival gaps by cause -- Annex 1. Data and methods -- Annex 2. Results of the decomposition analysis.

xviii, 61 p. : graphs, tables

Includes bibliographical references (p. 60-61).