"Life Expectancy" and the contributing factors.

What Factors Contribute to Life Expectancy

ICMS, Inc. Reports

By Tom Okure, Ph.D.

Life expectancy is a crucial indicator of health status that governments employ to set policies that impact our everyday lives. Statistically, it measures the average years an individual is expected to live. A life table is typically used to show the probability of a person's demise before the individual's next birthday for each age. The calculation is based on a person's birth year, present age, and other demographic elements such as sex.  

Many governments use life expectancy to set important policies such as the pension age and target health policy initiatives. Life expectancy is not a fixed phenomenon and varies among countries, rising and falling depending on several factors including poverty, crowded living conditions, stable employment and economic conditions, war, high-risk job situations, insecurity, and lack of access to proper medical health services including vaccinations of children and the general population. Lack of access to vaccinations especially during an epidemic or pandemic such as the COVID-19 pandemic that the world recently experienced can devastate a population, thereby reducing the population's life expectancy.

Devastating impact of drought on children's life expectancy 

Wars and famines caused by drought can result in severe food shortages and devastate regions and populations as we have witnessed in many parts of the world, for example in Ethiopia, Sudan, etc

In the United States of America (USA), life expectancy has been measured by the government dating back to the early 1940s. Government data reveal that life expectancy continues to increase steadily with advances in medical science and the overall well-being of the population. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA states that life expectancy witnessed a small increase in 2022 following a two-year decline. Government data shows that life expectancy for children born in the United States is now projected to be about 77.5 years, up from 76.5 in 2021 and 77 in 2020. Government data from the CDC suggest that deaths caused by drug overdoses and COVID-19 infections were contributing key factors to the decline. According to government data, COVID-19 took nearly 417,000 lives in 2021, more than in 2020, and for the second year was the third leading cause of death.

Harold M. Lambert/Getty images

If you were born in the United States, follow the link below to see your life expectancy the year you were born, and how it has changed since the computation of life expectancy began dating back to 1940. It is very remarkable and revealing.

Read more about life expectancy in the USA by following the link below:

How long you were expected to live the year you were born

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All rights reserved by Tom Okure, Ph.D. CEO of Inter-Continental Mgt. Systems, Inc. (or ICMS Inc.). ICMS, Inc., is a multifaceted business and management consulting firm with its head office in Albany, New York