An average person, aged 70 years old living somewhere in the world, was discovered to be not dead last Monday and living a normal life in his or her home. Some discrepancies in this story say that a local man in the same town was found alive at the age of 69, while a woman from the same city was found alive at the age of 74. Another average person, this one living in the United States*, was found alive and kicking at the age of nearly 79 years!*
Life expectancies at birth data for previous years show this was not always the case. From 1800 to about 1900 the average age hovered around 20 years.* In the early 20th Century, that average began to rise, and by 1960, had risen to approximately 50 years, and continued to rise sharply to today’s averages.
There is still room for improvement in finding a man or a woman alive, having survived childhood, in the world older than 70 years old (on average). For example, in countries such as the Central African Republic and Kingdom of Lesotho,* the average lifespan is still only comparable to the worldwide average in 1960. But it’s fair to say, that human health has increased significantly worldwide so that you, if you’re an average man or woman, will probably be able to enjoy what life is like at the age of 70.
— This has been your very banal report —
Check out this amazing interactive map from
https://ourworldindata.org showing life expectancy by year and country going back to the 16th Century!
Learn more from the sources used for this article:
- https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sp.dyn.le00.in
- https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
- https://www.gapminder.org/data/documentation/gd004/ 2Gapminder data is aggregate data from several leading sources of data, including ILO, World Bank, OECD, WHO, and others.
Hover over any * to see some Extra Facts for Nerds within the article text.