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Background To curb the rising global burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include a target to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by a third by 2030. A quantitative assessment of the effect on longevity of meeting this target is one of the many important measures needed to advocate and inform national disease control policies. We did a global analysis to estimate improvements in average expected years lived between 30 and 70 years of age that would result from meeting the SDG target. Methods We estimated age-specific mortality in 183 countries in 2015, for the four major NCDs (cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes) and all NCDs combined, using data from WHO Global Health Estimates. We then estimated the potential gains in average expected years lived between 30 and 70 years of age (LE [30-70)) by eliminating all or a third of premature mortality from specific causes of death in countries grouped by World Bank income groups. The feasibility of reducing mortality to the targeted level over 15 years was also assessed on the basis of historical mortality trends from 2000 to 2015. Findings Reducing a third of premature mortality from NCDs over 15 years is feasible in high-income and uppermiddle-income countries, but remains challenging in countries with lower income levels. National longevity will improve if this target is met, corresponding to an average gain in LE [30-70) of 0•64 years worldwide from reduced premature mortality for the four major NCDs and 0•80 years for all NCDs. According to major NCD type, the largest gains attributable to cardiovascular diseases would be in lower-middle-income countries (a gain of 0•45 years), whereas gains attributable to cancer would be in low-income countries (0•33 years). Interpretation A one-third reduction in premature mortality from the major NCDs in 2015-30 would have substantial effects on longevity. High-level political commitments to effective and equitable national surveillance and prioritised prevention, early detection, and treatment programmes tailored to the major NCD types are needed urgently in lowerresourced settings if this SDG target is to be met by 2030.

We estimate the effects of declining smoking and increasing obesity on mortality in the United States over the period 2010–2040. Data on cohort behavioral histories are integrated into these estimates. Future distributions of body mass indices are projected using transition matrices applied to the initial distribution in 2010. In addition to projections of current obesity, we project distributions of obesity when cohorts are age 25. To these distributions, we apply death rates by current and age-25 obesity status observed in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988–2006. Estimates of the effects of smoking changes are based on observed relations between cohort smoking patterns and cohort death rates from lung cancer. We find that changes in both smoking and obesity are expected to have large effects on U.S. mortality. For males, the reductions in smoking have larger effects than the rise in obesity throughout the projection period. By 2040, male life expectancy at age 40 is expected to have gained 0.83 years from the combined effects. Among women, however, the two sets of effects largely offset one another throughout the projection period, with a small gain of 0.09 years expected by 2040.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13524-013-0246-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The under-5 mortality rate has declined from 93 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 39 per 1000 live births in 2018. This improvement in child survival warrants an examination of age-specific trends and causes of death over time and across regions and an extension of the survival focus to older children and adolescents. We examine patterns and trends in mortality for neonates, postneonatal infants, young children, older children, young adolescents and older adolescents from 2000 to 2016. Levels and trends in causes of death for children and adolescents under 20 years of age are based on United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation for all-cause mortality, the Maternal and Child Epidemiology Estimation group for cause of death among children under-5 and WHO Global Health Estimates for 5–19 year-olds. From 2000 to 2016, the proportion of deaths in young children aged 1–4 years declined in most regions while neonatal deaths became over 25% of all deaths under 20 years in all regions and over 50% of all under-5 deaths in all regions except for sub-Saharan Africa which remains the region with the highest under-5 mortality in the world. Although these estimates have great variability at the country level, the overall regional patterns show that mortality in children under the age of 5 is increasingly concentrated in the neonatal period and in some regions, in older adolescents. The leading causes of disease for children under-5 remain preterm birth and infectious diseases, pneumonia, diarrhoea and malaria. For older children and adolescents, injuries become important causes of death as do interpersonal violence and self-harm. Causes of death vary by region.