Life expectancy at birth reflects the overall mortality level of a population. To put it more accurately, there would have been far fewer elderly people, since people aged and so looked older much more rapidly in ancient times, as is true today in countries where people lead much tougher lives than in the West. Ancient Greeks believed that there was nothing to be ashamed of in being old. A problem inherent in the study of old age in ancient times is that the Greeks rarely recorded a person’s age at death on their gravestone. Life Expectancy (Years) Life Expectancy in the World from 1955 to Present Males, Females, and Both Sexes combined Males Females Both Sexes 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 … In 2020, life expectancy at birth for Greece was 82.41 years. Life expectancy today is about 80 for females and 75 for males in some countries. According to the most recent data published by the Greek Statistics Authority (ELSTAT), the average life expectancy of Greek people rose from 77.2 years in 1990 to 81.5 years in 2016. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus. Similarly, female life expectancy was higher than male life expectancy in every NUTS level 2 region with available data. Demography, which studies the characteristics of human populations is highly interested in this measure; see, for example, Yaukey & Anderton ().Statistics on life expectancy are derived from a mathematical model that converts a set of age-specific death rates into a survival curve. The life expectancy is shown separately for males, and for females, as well … The US CIA published the following life expectancy data in its World Factbook. Life expectancy at birth indicates the number of years a newborn infant would live if prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth were to stay the same throughout its life. 80.5 years (life expectancy at birth, males) The Romans did record a person’s age, but that evidence is highly unreliable. The most recent life expectancy at birth for males (79 years) equals the EU15 average, while women are expected to live one year less (83 years) than their counterparts in the EU15. In fact, longevity was viewed as a sign of wisdom and exceptional intelligence, and they took considerable pride in their age. [3] The following table shows the life expectancy at birth for the period 2010 to 2015. Definition: This entry contains the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality at each age remains constant in the future. The Greeks, on the other hand, used a harmless resin additive as a preservative. According to a treatise falsely attributed to the satirist Lucian entitled The Long-Lived Ones, the factors that contribute to a long life include climate, diet, occupation, physical fitness, and mental alertness. In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, a much smaller percentage of people survived into their fifties, let alone their sixties, seventies, or eighties than they do today. See also: Countries in the world ranked by Life Expectancy. Out of all the countries in the world, Greece ranked at number 31 in 2019. Plato finished The Laws shortly before his death at the age of 81. Life expectancy assumes that the age-specific death rates for the year in question will apply throughout the lifetime of individuals born in that year. This is a transcript from the video series The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World. The number that I have heard several times is 30. Euripides, who was slightly younger than Sophocles, wrote his two last plays, The Bacchae and The Iphigeneia at Aulis, at about the age of 80. It is expressed as years. In 2018, it ranked 57th among 195 countries, with an average life expectancy of 76.3 years. That said war, sickness and childbearing had a very strong impact on the average age. Ancient Greeks believed that there was nothing to be ashamed of in being old. The Global Burden of Disease 2010 study published updated figures in 2012,[13] including recalculations of life expectancies[14] which differ substantially in places from the UN estimates for 2010 (reasons for this are discussed in the freely available appendix to the paper, pages 25–27, currently not available). This practice also, incidentally, would have led to a decrease in their fertility. The Icarians live longer than the Europeans, the Americans and beyond. One of the main reasons why more people survive today into old age is because there is less risk of mortality in infancy and early adolescence. 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