Lifespan

What is lifespan?

Lifespan is the maximum length of time that a person can live. Right now, the maximum human lifespan is 122 years. Experts base that lifespan on the longest-lived person with a verifiable date of birth.

The person who holds that record is Jeanne Calment, a French woman who died in 1997. For people assigned male at birth (AFAB) only, lifespan is a bit shorter. The verified longest-lived man was Jiroemon Kimura of Japan, who died in 2013 at age 116.

But lifespan is just one metric for how long humans can or should live. Others include:

• Life expectancy
• Longevity
• Healthspan

Life expectancy

Life expectancy is an average age that a group of people are likely to survive to. It’s common for people to use this term interchangeably with “lifespan.”

There’s no way to predict how long a single person is going to live with any accuracy. So, experts calculate an approximate average based on population statistics.

Where you live can heavily influence your life expectancy. Some other factors that play a role in that include (but aren’t limited to) the following:

• Access to healthcare (including physical access, affordability, and availability of professionals and supplies)
• Access to nutritious foods and clean water
• Availability of sanitation services
• Biological family history
• Climate and any impacts of climate change
• Environmental regulations to limit how pollution affects you
• Inherited or genetic factors
• Medical history
• Presence of public safety services like firefighting and law enforcement agencies
• War or armed conflicts

And sometimes, global concerns affect life expectancy. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic that started in late 2019 caused global life expectancy to drop for two straight years, sinking to 71 in 2021.

Longevity

Longevity is the term for living longer than the average life expectancy. And around the world, the number of people living longer than average is going up. In 2000, the number of people over 75 was about 152 million. As of 2023, that number has almost doubled to 300.8 million.

Healthspan

Advances in modern medicine mean people are living longer. But living longer isn’t the same thing as being alive and healthy. That’s where the concept of healthspan comes in.

Healthspan is how long people can live without chronic conditions and age-related disabilities. It’s a concept that researchers may use when looking at groups of people, not individuals. A group with a longer average healthspan may have better health than other similar groups. Or it might mean that health interventions aimed at the group are working.

What’s the average human life expectancy?

As of 2022, the worldwide average life expectancy was 72 years. That’s well over double what the average life expectancy was in 1900. Back then, it was 32.

For people AMAB, the average life expectancy is about 70 years. For people assigned female at birth (AFAB), it’s about 75 years.

But 72 is just the global average. It can vary a lot from country to country. In 2022, the top five average life expectancies worldwide were in:

1. Macao: 85 years.
2. Liechtenstein: 84 years.
3. Japan: 84 years.
4. Hong Kong: 84 years.
5. French Polynesia: 84 years.

The United States ranks 64th on that list, with an average life expectancy of 77 years. The average life expectancy for people AMAB in the U.S. is 75. For people AFAB, it’s 80.

What’s the difference between life expectancy and lifespan?

Life expectancy is the average age that people live to. This average can vary depending on where you live, your personal background and more. Lifespan is the maximum age people can live to, so it’s much longer than the average.