Life Expectancy | featured news

What is it about the Italians? They smoke more than us, they earn less, their economy is in even worse shape than ours, they spend less on healthcare, and yet - they live longer. Not just a bit, but a whopping 18 months more on average.

San Francisco researchers have come up with a test to predict how likely people 50 and over are to die in the next decade. Ideally, you want to score as low as possible. That typically means being younger and not having certain health conditions (like lung disease, heart failure or most cancers). It also means being at least slightly overweight, according to the new study that detailed the index.

More people worldwide are living into old age, but the gains in the United States were much smaller, according to a new study.

Americans are living longer but with more chronic illnesses, according to a report.

The theory that people might dramatically increase their life spans by severely restricting their food intake has been around for decades. But that theory takes a big blow from a new study that finds monkeys put on such a strict diet -- getting 30% fewer calories than usual -- live no longer than monkeys allowed a normal diet, says USA Today's Science Fair.

It's often said that early retirement lengthens your life, but is it true? And do some professions have a shorter life expectancy? If a statistical claim is repeated often enough it can become accepted as a universal truth, even if it has no basis in fact. There's the suggestion that 93% of communication is non-verbal (not true) or the oft-repeated suggestion that there are more people alive today than have ever lived (not true either).

Americans might live a little longer if they cut back on the amount of time they spend sitting down, a new study says. Reducing the daily average time that people spend sitting to less than three hours would increase the U.S. life expectancy by two years, the study found.

There are nearly 12,000 centenarians in Britain today, but with more people reaching 100 how do scientific theories about life expectancy compare with the experience of those who have received a telegram from the Queen?

The more outgoing and optimistic you are, the longer you may live, a new study suggests.

Education may not only improve a person's finances, it is also linked to better health habits and a longer life.