page_title: Life expectancy
section_title: Regional variations
hierarchical_section_title: Life expectancy / Human patterns / Regional variations
caption_attribution_description: English: Life expectancy vs. GDP (PPP) per capita, accordig to World Bank, 2009 (sample: 162 coutries) Sources: GDP per capita (PPP), (World Bank, 2009) Life expancy (CIA factbook, 2009)
context_page_description: Life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of its birth, its current age, and other demographic factors including gender. The most commonly used measure is life expectancy at birth, which can be defined in two ways. Cohort LEB is the mean length of life of an actual birth cohort and can be computed only for cohorts born many decades ago, so that all their members have died. Period LEB is the mean length of life of a hypothetical cohort assumed to be exposed, from birth through death, to the mortality rates observed at a given year.
  National LEB figures reported by national agencies and international organizations for human populations are indeed estimates of period LEB. In the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, human LEB was 26 years; the 2010 world LEB was 67.2 years. For recent years, LEB in Eswatini is about 49, while LEB in Japan is about 83. The combination of high infant mortality and deaths in young adulthood from accidents, epidemics, plagues, wars, and childbirth, particularly before modern medicine was widely available, significantly lowers LEB.
context_section_description: Human beings are expected to live on average 30–40 years in Eswatini and 82.6 years in Japan, but the latter's recorded life expectancy may have been very slightly increased by counting many infant deaths as stillborn. An analysis published in 2011 in The Lancet attributes Japanese life expectancy to equal opportunities and public health as well as diet.
  There are great variations in life expectancy between different parts of the world, mostly caused by differences in public health, medical care, and diet. The impact of AIDS on life expectancy is particularly notable in many African countries. According to projections made by the United Nations (UN) in 2002, the life expectancy at birth for 2010–2015 (if HIV/AIDS did not exist) would have been:
  70.7 years instead of 31.6 years, Botswana
  69.9 years instead of 41.5 years, South Africa
  70.5 years instead of 31.8 years, Zimbabwe
  Actual life expectancy in Botswana declined from 65 in 1990 to 49 in 2000 before increasing to 66 in 2011. In South Africa, life expectancy was 63 in 1990, 57 in 2000, and 58 in 2011. And in Zimbabwe, life expectancy was 60 in 1990, 43 in 2000, and 54 in 2011.
  During the last 200 years, African countries have generally not had the same improvements in mortality rates that have been enjoyed by countries in Asia, Latin America, and Europe.
  In the United States, African-American people have shorter life expectancies than their European-American counterparts. For example, white Americans born in 2010 are expected to live until age 78.9, but black Americans only until age 75.1. This 3.8-year gap, however, is the lowest it has been since 1975 at the latest. The greatest difference was 7.1 years in 1993. In contrast, Asian-American women live the longest of all ethnic groups in the United States, with a life expectancy of 85.8 years. The life expectancy of Hispanic Americans is 81.2 years. According to the new government reports in the US, life expectancy in the country dropped again because of the rise in suicide and drug overdose rates. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found nearly 70,000 more Americans died in 2017 than 2016, with rising rates of death among 25- to 44-year-olds.
  Cities also experience a wide range of life expectancy based on neighborhood breakdowns. This is largely due to economic clustering and poverty conditions that tend to associate based on geographic location. Multi-generational poverty found in struggling neighborhoods also contributes. In United States cities such as Cincinnati, the life expectancy gap between low income and high income neighborhoods touches 20 years.
caption: Plot of life expectancy vs. GDP per capita in 2009. This phenomenon is known as the Preston curve.
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