This study introduces a new way of measuring life expectancy, accounting for the historical mortality conditions that today’s older generations lived through. By this measure, Australian men, on average, live to 74.1.
This study further shows that, for the Australian women, they are ranked second, behind their Swiss counterparts. The results may be attributed to Australia’s long-term stability, along with the fact that they have a high standard of living – for example, having enough to eat, and not seeing a lot of major conflict play a part.
This study gets its results by comparing a group of people who were born in the same year, and so have experienced similar conditions throughout their life. Dr Payne believes that this method will accurately help to see if someone is reaching their cohort’s life expectancy. For example, any Australian man who died before age 74 is not living up to their cohort’s life expectancy.
Dr Payne says there are a number of factors which might've contributed to Australia jumping ahead in these new rankings."Mortality was really high in Japan in the 30s, 40s and 50s. In Australia, mortality was really low during that time," Dr Payne said. "French males, for example, drop out because a lot of them died during WW2, some from direct conflict, others from childhood conditions."
Dr Payne is now hoping to get enough data to look at how rankings have changed over the last 30 or 40 years.
Source material from Science Daily