Basically, I'm wondering: if someone makes good decisions, or the best of their circumstances, how does their average life expectancy stack up to other developed nations?
Wow, pretty interesting. I compared to the US and it turned out that I'm expected to live 0.2 year longer than if I was from the US. I'm from a third-world (Tunisia if you are curious), so that was totally unexpected. The Life expectancy here is pretty high comparing to other developing countries.
Woulnd't life expectancy reflect pretty much all major factors related to health? (outcomes, access, etc) For that, US currently ranks about number ~50 in the world, which is not that bad, but also not so great for a rich country.
> It's more likely that we've hit some sort of life expectancy peak in the most highly developed western nations and if the UK and USA go first, it's very likely that other countries aren't far behind.
Except that the US hasn't reached the peak—life expectancy in other nations is up to 5-10 years higher (depending on gender).
I wonder how countries get to 80 year on average given all those early cancers and genetical diseases (also fatalities and suicides) that are surely to reap their harvest.
This should mean that average for people who did not die prematurely is more close to 90 years. That's scary.
Personally I'd be happy enough to live to 70, and won't be surprised to die much earlier.
I’ve always found mean life expectancy an odd metric. Median life expectancy seems more useful to answer “how long am I expected to live?” and appears to be 3-4 years higher in the US.
I'm not going to claim life expectancy is equivalent to quality of life (although I do think it correlates). But I was just responding to the comment which claimed life expectancy had only increased in advanced countries.
And in France it's 82.7 years, the wealth of the US doesn't directly translate to good life expectancy, especially when you've got so many inequalities. The highest life expectancy is at 85 years in Japan. The average life exepctancy in the world in 72.6 years, 79 in Europe, 82.5 in Western Europe. With all due respect to Tunisia, it's better than average but still lower than "any western country".
I wouldn't be surprised if this is dependent on the country of origin. Some countries have seen large increases in life expectancy, others not so much (the US, though this depends on where, people in some states are much more active than those in other states) or are even seeing declines (Russia).
You clearly haven't looked at life expectancy in other places. Life expectancy in other places rose more than in the US. That's what's being discussed here.
We'll probably have more outliers of wealthy/healthy people living longer, but poor management of broader access to basic health and education may not result in that drastic an increase in overall average results.
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