• Question: What is the average age for someone to die

    Asked by Bob the Builder to Alex, Ali, Kerry, Philip, Theo on 17 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Alex Pool

      Alex Pool answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      That definitely depends on where you are in the world. But the worldwide average is 71.5 years.

    • Photo: Kerry O'Shea

      Kerry O'Shea answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      Yes, as Alex suggests, it is location dependent. I live in Glasgow, which has the lowest life expectancy in the UK. The national life expectancy for men is 78.2 years, in Glasgow this is just 71.6 years.

    • Photo: Philip Ratcliffe

      Philip Ratcliffe answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      The other two have already answered this, but typically it’s around seventy-odd, with women generally living a bit longer than men. In Japan it’s about 85 for women and 80 for men while in Angola it’s around 40!
      Then there are lots of factors: lifestyle is very important – you can’t expect to live very long if you smoke and drink heavily, overeat and do no exercise. There are also genetic factors that can be important. So if you know nothing about the person 70 is about average, but if you have other information like sex, country, lifestyle etc. you can be more precise.

    • Photo: Alison Thomson

      Alison Thomson answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      I agree with the others – it depends where you live, but early 70s seems to be the average.

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