Research from the Australian National University in Canberra has revealed that Australian men are now living longer than any other group of males in the world.
The study introduces a new way of measuring life expectancy, accounting for the historical mortality conditions that today’s older generations lived through.
Co-leader of the study, Collin Payne said by this measure Australian men, on average, lived to 74.1 years.
“The news is good for Australian women too; the study shows they’re ranked second, behind their Swiss counterparts,” Dr Payne said.
He said the study used data from 15 countries across Europe, North America and Asia with high life expectancies.
“Popular belief has it that Japan and the Nordic countries are doing really well in terms of health, wellbeing, and longevity, but Australia is right there,” Dr Payne said.
“The results have a lot to do with long term stability and the fact Australia has had a high standard of living for a really, really long time. Simple things like having enough to eat and not seeing a lot of major conflict play a part.”
Dr Payne’s study grouped people by year of birth, separating ‘early’ deaths from ‘late’ deaths, to come up with the age at which someone can be considered an ‘above-average’ survivor.
“Most measures of life expectancy are just based on mortality rates at a given time,” Dr Payne said.
“It’s basically saying if you took a hypothetical group of people and put them through the mortality rates that a country experienced in 2018, for example, they would live to an average age of 80.”
However, he said that did not tell anything about the life courses of people, as they’ve lived through to old age.
“Our measure takes the life course into account, including mortality rates from 50, 60, or 70 years ago,” Dr Payne said.
“What matters is we’re comparing a group of people who were born in the same year, and so have experienced similar conditions throughout their life.”
The research has been published in the journal Population Studies and can be accessed for a fee at this external link.
