LIFE EXPECTANCY: A Brief International Comparison

Abstract

Life-expectancy data are essential to many fields, notably demography, health care, insurance, military recruiting, and forensic economics. Professionals using global rankings find life expectancy data misleading. Policymakers need a standard protocol to measure and track life expectancies. A case study comparing four countries’ life-expectancy data against the U.S. found skewed population data caused by different definitions and different formulas across different countries. Only the U.S. Life-Expectancy Tables made adjustments for both infant mortality and fertility rates. Absent a standard protocol to measure and track life expectancies, policymakers will continue to reach wrong conclusions. A worldwide standard protocol would require all counties to define life-expectancy data in the same way, calculate life expectancy values in the same way, and uniformly adjust for rates of both infant mortality and fertility. The significant changes called for will not come quickly, but we surely can suggest a starting basis.