What is life expectancy?

  • (noun): An expected time to live as calculated on the basis of statistical probabilities.

Life Expectancy

Life expectancy is the expected (in the statistical sense) number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by ex, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience. (In technical literature, this symbol means the average number of complete years of life remaining, excluding fractions of a year. The corresponding statistic including fractions of a year, the normal meaning of life expectancy, has a symbol with a small circle over the e.) In the modern era, life expectancy has increased so dramatically as to call into question the ability to use current data for very long range predictions into the future.

Read more about Life Expectancy.

Some articles on life expectancy:

Life Expectancy Vs. Life Span
... Life expectancy is often confused with life span to the point that they are nearly synonyms when people hear 'life expectancy was 35 years' they often ... The average life expectancy in the 18th century was 35 years ... was forever." This ignores the fact that the life expectancy generally quoted is the at birth number which is an average that includes all the babies that die ...
Subdivisions Of Laos - Demographics - Health
... Male life expectancy at birth was at 60.85 and female life expectancy was at 64.76 in 2012 ... Healthy life expectancy was at 54 in 2006 ...
Health In Georgia (country) - Statistical Overview of Health Status - Life Expectancy
... Average life expectancy for Georgians is 74.2, which lies just below the European average of about 75 years ... Interestingly, the average life expectancy in former-Soviet Russia lies drastically below Georgia's at about 66 years ... The life expectancy in Georgia is 69.3 for males, and 79.0 for females ...
List Of Sovereign States In Europe By Life Expectancy
... This is map and list of European countries by life expectancy from World Population Prospects 2006 revision ... Ocean North Sea Norwegian Sea Strait of Gibraltar State (51) life expectancy Albania 76.4 Andorra 83.5 Armenia 72.1 Austria 79.8 Azerbaijan 67.5 Belarus 69.0 Belgium 79.4 Bosnia and Herzegovina 74.9 ...
Lives At Risk - Myths About Government Health Care - Quality of Health Care
... authors contend that the United States' high infant mortality and mediocre life expectancy are not indicative of the quality of health care ... In the latter case, they note that while Japan has a longer life expectancy, Japanese Americans enjoy the same long life expectancy ...

Famous quotes containing the words expectancy and/or life:

    If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
    Muriel Spark (b. 1918)

    Parents vary in their sense of what would be suitable repayment for creating, sustaining, and tolerating you all those years, and what circumstances would be drastic enough for presenting the voucher. Obviously there is no repayment that would be sufficient . . . but the effort to call in the debt of life is too outrageous to be treated as anything other than a joke.
    Frank Pittman (20th century)