Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 79 
people in eastern European and Baltic states have a life expectancy (at the age of 65) of less than 17 
and up to 19.5 years, they all are under the average of 20.0 for the EU28. Some mixed results can be 
observed for Germany, Belgium and Denmark, but clearly southern and northern countries as well as 
France have the highest life expectancy. 
Regarding mortality and morbidity , in 2019 at EU27 level the main causes of death  were 
cardiovascular diseases plus stroke and ischaemic diseases (35%), cancer (26%), respiratory diseases 
(8%), and accidents and external causes (5%).192  
 
Figure 24: Main causes of mortality 2019, EU27  
 
Generally, academic literature groups the main determinants of life expectancy  into three main 
categories: resources of the healthcare system, factors related to lifestyle, and socioeconomic 
factors.193 Working conditions are in general regarded as part of the socioeconomic status.   
‘A number of studies have turned to examining within-country health inequalities in order to understand 
population health. One of the first notable studies was the Black Report (Black 1982), which exposed 
staggering differences in health across socio- demographic groups in Britain. Since then, it has been 
shown that systematic and persistent health inequalities exist worldwide, whereby individuals with lower 
income, education, and occupational status tend to enjoy considerably worse health.’ 194 
Due to the difficulty to receive harmonised morbidity and health data from administrative sources of the 
national health systems, European quantitative overviews often rely on surveys  that ask for self -
reported health data (Eurostat: Survey on Income and Living Conditions SILC, Eurofound: European 
Quality of Life Survey EQLS, etc.195).  
The EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU -SILC) corroborate the impact of the 
socioeconomic status for an unequal health status, life expectancy or expected healt hy life years. 
People with lower income are less likely to report being in good health : 59% of EU citizens in the 
lowest income quintile (the lowest 20%) report being in good health compared to 80% of those in the