3.5: Life Expectancy

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Page ID: 12235

Caralyn Zehnder, Kalina Manoylov, Samuel Mutiti, Christine Mutiti, Allison VandeVoort, & Donna Bennett
Georgia College and State University via GALILEO Open Learning Materials

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Life expectancy is the average number of years that a person in a particular population is expected to live. Life expectancy at birth is the number of years a newborn infant would live if mortality rates at the time of its birth did not change. For example, the life expectancy at birth for someone born in 2014 in Japan is 84.46 years while the life expectancy at birth for someone born in the United States in 2014 is 79.56 years (source: https://www.cia.gov). As a country moves through the demographic transition model, life expectancy increases. Overall, life expectancy has increased for most countries and regions over the past 100 years. However, there is still a significant amount of variation in life expectancy in different regions of the world.

Use this World Health Organization interactive map to compare life expectancy among different countries: http://gamapserver.who.int/gho/inter...ncy/atlas.html

What other countries have a life expectancy at birth similar to the United States? List two countries that have a higher life expectancy and two countries that have a lower life expectancy than the United States.