Popu Ion Societies

the difference did not lessen until 1980. The gap still amounted to 4.3 years in 2000, whereas it was only 2.8 in 1950. The pattern for France and Italy was different. After three decades of increase, the difference stabilised for some dozen years, and it is was only after 1992 (in France) and 1995 (in Italy) that it really decreased. In France, it was only 7.0 years in 2003 whereas it had reached 8.2 years in the 1980s. This reversal came about when life expectancy was still increasing for both men and women (table 1). It depended neither upon the life expectancy level nor upon the magnitude of the difference. Thus in 1970 in England and Wales the change came about when the mean length of life had just reached 71, whereas in France life expectancy exceeded 74 years when the difference stabilised, and reached almost 78 years when it started to reduce. In the USA and France, the difference in life expectancy was of the same order of size until the 1970s. For the former, the difference ceased to increase