How Long Will I Live?
It’s a question we may ask ourselves upon the birth of a new grandchild, as we plan our retirement, or simply on a reflective day. But it’s a question with no true answer.
We can get a very general idea from statistics and studies, though. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. life expectancy at birth reached a record high of 79.0 years in 2024: 76.5 years for men and 81.4 years for women. (Despite the record high, life expectancy here remains 3.7 years lower than the average of other large, wealthy countries (82.7 years), according to research by the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, which also notes that the U.S. spends nearly twice as much per person on healthcare as its peer nations, yet continues to have the lowest life expectancy among them.)
The CDC’s data also shows that people reaching age 65 can expect to live an additional 19.7 years on average; that women outlive men by an average of 4.9 years; and that the top three causes of death remain heart disease, cancer and unintentional injuries.
A growing number of online longevity calculators — often available from insurance companies, actuaries, and even the Social Security Administration — can be interesting and useful tools for thinking about our futures. But experts urge caution, noting that these online calculators are merely estimates based on average population data, not predictions of whether we’ll be at that grandchild’s wedding or how much we need to save for our retirement.
“No one should be using the 50th percentile in their planning — by definition, you have a 50 percent chance of living longer,” Wade D. Pfau, co-director of the American College of Financial Services Center for Retirement Income, told AARP in 2022. Instead, Pfau recommends planning to the age you have a 25 percent chance of outliving.
Indeed, a review of available life expectancy calculators prepared for the Department of Veterans Affairs found that while some tools can help estimate risk, their accuracy varies widely depending on the information they used, the population they were developed from and how the data was applied.
The review found that the most useful calculators typically consider more than just age and gender. Factors such as medical conditions, functional ability, lifestyle, and health and family history can improve estimates, but even the best models can’t account for every variable that affects our own personal longevity, including future medical advances, unexpected illnesses, accidents or changes in lifestyle.
So longevity calculators can be a helpful starting point for conversations about retirement planning, healthcare decisions and healthy aging, but what they say shouldn’t be viewed as a personal “expiration date” or a crystal ball. However, if you’re curious, online calculators can offer a glimpse into the future, based on statistics and health information, to estimate your lifestyle patterns. Here are a few we discovered:
Online Calculators & Data
Actuaries Longevity Illustrator
This free online tool was developed by the American Academy of Actuaries and the Society of Actuaries to help people understand their potential longevity and plan for retirement. Rather than providing a single life expectancy number, it uses factors such as age, sex, smoking status and general health to show the likelihood of living to different ages, helping individuals and couples better understand the risk of outliving their retirement savings.
This assessment estimates your life expectancy and the number of healthy years you may have ahead, then provides personalized recommendations for improving your “good years” of life. Developed by Blue Zones in collaboration with the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, the three-minute test considers factors such as age, location, body measurements, smoking, chronic health conditions and lifestyle habits to offer insights into healthy aging. (Blue Zones are five regions around the world where people tend to live significantly longer and healthier lives.)
John Hancock / MIT AgeLab Longevity Preparedness Tool
Developed in collaboration with the MIT AgeLab, this preparedness tool looks beyond life expectancy and evaluates eight areas that influence quality of life in later years: health, finances, caregiving, housing, daily activities, community, life transitions and social connections. Users receive an overall score and personalized insights to identify areas where they may want to plan ahead or make changes.
“Living to 100” Scientific Life Expectancy Calculator
The 40-question online life expectancy assessment was developed by geriatrician and longevity researcher Dr. Thomas Perls, founder of the New England Centenarian Study at Boston University. The calculator asks about family history, lifestyle habits, nutrition, exercise, sleep, medical history and other health factors to estimate a person’s longevity and provide personalized feedback for healthy aging. Rather than focusing just on predicting your lifespan, the site identifies behaviors that influence how long and how well you live.
National Center for Health Statistics (CDC): Life Expectancy
The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics publishes annual U.S. life expectancy data, based on national death records and life tables, that shows the average number of years a person at a given age can expect to live if current mortality rates remain the same. The details are widely used to monitor population health, identify long-term trends and compare life expectancy by age, sex, race and geography. The CDC also provides downloadable life tables, reports, interactive charts and neighborhood-level life expectancy maps.
Social Security Administration’s Actuarial Life Table
This table estimates how long people are expected to live based on current mortality rates. You might find its format sobering: It shows the probability that someone of a specific age will die before their next birthday, the number of survivors remaining from a hypothetical group of 100,000 births, and the average number of additional years a person at that age is expected to live. Actuaries use these tables to project life expectancy, estimate retirement and Social Security costs, and calculate insurance and pension benefits.
Developed by geriatric medicine experts at the University of California San Francisco, ePrognosis helps clinicians estimate life expectancy, disability risk and other health outcomes in older adults by considering factors such as overall health, mobility and daily functioning. Intended to support medical decisions about preventive screenings, treatments and long-term care planning, it’s primarily for health care professionals. But the site can also help us better understand how our health influences future medical choices and can spark conversations with our doctors about healthy aging. The site emphasizes that its tools are meant to supplement, not replace, individualized medical advice or clinical judgment.
Top image: Creativa Images, via Canva.com
