Alcohol availability, premature mortality, and life expectancy in Estonia

This summary gives a brief overview of the recent developments in life expectancy and premature mortality in Estonia over the last two decades. Risky health behaviors contribute to premature mortality, and alcohol is one of the main risk factors in Estonia. Alcohol-related adverse outcomes can be reduced by implementing effective alcohol control policy measures. One such measure is reducing alcohol availability. It can be shown that reducing alcohol availability decreases alcohol-attributable mortality in Estonia, and thus improves the overall life expectancy in the country.

Life expectancy has constantly increased since 2000, reaching its all-time high of 78.8 years (74.4 years for males and 82.8 years for females) in 2019 (Statistics Estonia 2021). This increase in life expectancy corresponds to an increase of almost 8.5 years (ca. 12.9%) for the male population, and an increase of nearly 6.4 years (ca. + 8.4%) for the female population. Additionally, the gender gap in life expectancy has narrowed down from 10.5 years to 8.4 years.