This working paper examines differences in life expectancy at birth across time, space and sexes, focusing on two origins: 1) changes in age-specific mortality rates; and 2) changes in age-specific mortality rates by cause of death.

We use decomposition methods in life expectancy differentials and show that the biggest contribution comes from reductions in mortality at advanced ages. In relation to the cause of death decomposition, we observe that the primary cause of differences is cardiovascular diseases, with a decreasing tendency, while on the contrary we observe a growing importance of cancer in all three dimensions analyzed. For the rest of the causes, results are more heterogeneous.