By Emily Sohn
Where can people expect to live the longest?
The answer to that question is usually pretty predictable and often dependent on wealth: People generally live longer in richer countries. Like Japan and Switzerland, where average life expectancies exceed 83 years.
In lower income countries, expected years of life are often far shorter — hovering below 55 in a number of sub-Saharan countries, including Chad, Mozambique and Sierra Leone.
But a recent data-crunch turned up a few surprises about how long people can expect to live in certain places, with some particularly encouraging news coming out of Niger.
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Christopher Murray, Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and a Professor of Global Health, is the lead author of the study and is quoted in this story.