Death and Dying
Title: What is the average age of death of a human being?
Information: One way of finding an answer to this question is to reword it slightly to: "What is the average life expectancy of a human being?" "Life expectancy" is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO ) as: "The number of years of life that can be expected on average in a given population." http://www.euro.who.int/observatory/Glossary/Toppage?hrase=L I think we're talking about the same thing, basically. "Life expectancy" can depend on several factors, such as: * the health of the baby at birth (Health Life Expectancy or HALE), * sex (gender), * race, * country in which the human lives There is also data based on how many years the individual has already lived so far! The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics provides some "fast facts" that answer this question. Here is a "fast fact" for the U.S. in 2001: Life expectancy for the general poplulation: 77.2 years. There is more data on this site, including "leading causes of death in 2001." You can find it at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm There is also detailed "morbidity" data for the U.S. in Table 12 of the "National Vital Statistics Report," February 18, 2004, produced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC.) You may notice, however, that there is a time lag for statistics. Compiling all this data takes a lot of work. Here it is 2004, but the most recent data in this report is from 2001! http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/nvsr52_14t12.pdf If you would like to find out more about the world's population and "life expectancy," look at the World Health Organization's (WHO ) "World Health Report 2003", Annex Table 4: Health LIfe Expectancy (HALE ) in all Member States, estimates for 2002." http://www.who.int/whr/2003/en/Annex4-en.pdf Here you will see that the estimated average life expectancy of a healthy baby boy born in Afghanistan in 2002 was 35.3 years (with a range or "Uncertainty Interval" of 26.7-40.4 years ) compared to that of a baby boy born in the U.S. in 2002, which was 67.2 years (with an "Uncertainty Interval of 66.6 to 67.8 years. ) You may want to dig into these statistics. If you have questions, please ask someone for help to interpret the data presented in the CDC's and WHO's tables. Your school and/or public library may be able to provide resources in print with the data you are looking for, too. Be sure to check with the librarians there. Have a great day! AskNSDL Staff
Category: Death and Dying