Trends in Life Expectancy in Romania between 1990 and 2018. A Territorial Analysis of Its Determinants

The present study proposes a multiscale analysis of the dynamics of life expectancy at birth in Romania from 1990 to 2018, starting from the hypothesis of its dependence on the level of economic development or the quality of the public health infrastructure. Information from official sources (National Institute of Statistics (INS), Eurostat) was processed using agglomerative hierarchical clustering, principal component analysis and multiple regression. The main part of the analysis is devoted to the evolution of this indicator by gender and residence area. The conclusions of this study converge towards certifying the existence of some strong correlations between the evolution of life expectancy at birth at the territorial level and the illustrative factors of the level of economic and social development or of the quality of the environment. The persistence or amplification of territorial disparities attests to the general process of regional polarization. The results of the study confirm the hypothesis of a significant correlation between the level of economic development and that of the quality of the public health infrastructure, expressed through the dynamics of life expectancy at birth.