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Life expectancy is the expected (in the statistical sense) number of years of life remaining at a given age.^[1] It is denoted by e_x, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience. (In technical literature, this symbol means the average number of complete years of life remaining, excluding fractions of a year. The corresponding statistic including fractions of a year, the normal meaning of life expectancy, has a symbol with a small circle over the e.) In modern times, life expectancy has substantially changed on a yearly basis and cannot be used accurately for long-term predictions.^{[citation needed]}

The term that is known as life expectancy is most often used in the context of human populations, but is also used in plant or animal ecology;^[2] it is calculated by the analysis of life tables (also known as actuarial tables). The term life expectancy may also be used in the context of manufactured objects^[3] although the related term shelf life is used for consumer products and the terms "mean time to breakdown" (MTTB) and "mean time before failures" (MTBF) are used in engineering literature.

Interpretation of life expectancy[link]

General explanation: It is important to note that life expectancy is an average. In many cultures, particularly before modern medicine was widely available, the combination of high infant mortality and deaths in young adulthood from accidents, wars, and childbirth, significantly lowers the overall life expectancy. But for someone who survived past these early hazards, living into their sixties or seventies would not be uncommon. For example, a society with a life expectancy of 40 may have very few people dying at age 40, most will die before 30 or after 55.

In countries with high infant mortality rates, the life expectancy at birth is highly sensitive to the rate of death in the first few years of life. Because of this sensitivity to infant mortality, simple life expectancy at age zero can be subject to gross misinterpretation, leading one to believe that a population with a low overall life expectancy will necessarily have a small proportion of older people. For example, in a hypothetical stationary population in which half the population dies before the age of five, but everybody else dies at exactly 70 years old, the life expectancy at age zero will be about 37 years, while about 25% of the population will be between the ages of 50 and 70. Another measure such as life expectancy at age 5 (e₅) can be used to exclude the effect of infant mortality to provide a simple measure of overall mortality rates other than in early childhood—in the hypothetical population above, life expectancy at age 5 would be another 65 years. Aggregate population measures such as the proportion of the population in various age classes should also be used alongside individual-based measures like formal life expectancy when analyzing population structure and dynamics.

Human life expectancy patterns[link]

Humans live on average 31.88 years in Swaziland and 82.6 years in Japan, although Japan's recorded life expectancy may have been very slightly increased by counting many infant deaths as stillborn.^[4] An analysis published in 2011 in The Lancet attributes Japanese life expectancy to equal opportunities and public health as well as diet.^[5][6]

The oldest confirmed recorded age for any human is 122 years (see Jeanne Calment). This is referred to as the "maximum life span", which is the upper boundary of life, the maximum number of years any human is known to have lived.^[7]

Life expectancy variation over time[link]

This section may be confusing or unclear to readers. Please help clarify the section; suggestions may be found on the talk page. (September 2011)

The following information is derived from Encyclopædia Britannica, 1961 and other sources, and unless otherwise stated represents estimates of the life expectancies of the population as a whole. In many instances life expectancy varied considerably according to class and gender.

Life expectancy at birth takes account of infant mortality but not pre-natal mortality.

In some cases life expectancy may increase with age as the individual survives the higher mortality rates associated with childhood. For instance, the table above listed life expectancy at birth in Medieval Britain at 30. A male member of the English aristocracy at the same period could expect to live, having survived until the age of 21^[17]:

• 1200-1300 A.D.: 43 years (to age 64)
• 1300-1400 A.D.: 34 years (to age 55) (due to the impact of the Black Death)
• 1400-1500 A.D.: 48 years (to age 69)
• 1500-1550 A.D.: 50 years (to age 71).

In general, the available data indicate that longer lifespans became more common recently in human evolution.^[9][22] This increased longevity is attributed by some writers to cultural adaptations rather than genetic evolution,^[23] although some research indicates that during the Neolithic Revolution natural selection favored increased longevity.^[10] Nevertheless, all researchers acknowledge the effect of cultural adaptations upon life expectancy.^[22]

During the early 1600s in England, life expectancy was only about 35 years, largely because two-thirds of all children died before the age of four.^[24] The average life expectancy in Colonial America was under 25 years in the Virginia colony,^[25] and in New England about 40% of children failed to reach adulthood.^[26] During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically.^[27] The percentage of children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730-1749 to 31.8% in 1810-1829.^[28][29]

Public health measures are credited with much of the recent increase in life expectancy. During the 20th century, the average lifespan in the United States increased by more than 30 years, of which 25 years can be attributed to advances in public health.^[30]

In order to assess the quality of these additional years of life, 'healthy life expectancies' have been calculated for the last 30 years. Since 2001, the World Health Organization publishes statistics called Healthy life expectancy (HALE), defined as the average number of years that a person can expect to live in "full health", excluding the years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury. Since 2004, Eurostat publishes annual statistics called Healthy Life Years (HLY) based on reported activity limitations. The United States of America uses similar indicators in the framework of their nationwide health promotion and disease prevention plan "Healthy People 2010". An increasing number of countries are using health expectancy indicators to monitor the health of their population.

Regional variations[link]

World map on life expectancy from WLE

+80   +77,5   +75   +72,5   +70   +67,5   +65

+60   +55   +50   +45   +40   - 40

Plot of life expectancy vs. GDP per capita in 2009.

Graphs of life expectancy at birth for some sub-Saharan countries showing the fall in the 1990s primarily due to the AIDS pandemic.^[31]

There are great variations in life expectancy between different parts of the world, mostly caused by differences in public health, medical care and diet. Much of the excess mortality (higher death rates) in poorer nations is due to war, starvation, and diseases (AIDS, Malaria, etc.). The impact of AIDS is particularly notable on life expectancy in many African countries; According to the UN^[32] the life expectancy at birth for 2010–2015 (if HIV/AIDS did not exist) would have been:

• 70.7 years instead of 31.6 in Botswana
• 69.9 years instead of 41.5 in South Africa
• 70.5 years instead of 31.8 in Zimbabwe.

As a result, over the past 200 years, countries with African populations have generally not had the same improvements in mortality rates that have been enjoyed by populations of Asian, Latin American or European origin. Notably, even in countries with a majority of European people, such as the United States, Britain, or Ireland, African people still tend to have shorter life expectancies than their European counterparts. For example, in the United States, Euro-Americans are expected to live until age 78.2, but African Americans only until age 73.6.^[33]

In contrast, Asian-Americans live the longest of all ethnic groups in the United States, with a life expectancy of 87 years, almost ten years longer than Euro-Americans.,^[34] which falls in line with the longer life expectancy among East Asian countries globally compared to European, Latin American or African countries. Surprisingly, Latino-Americans are second place among ethnic groups on life expectancy, living on average two years longer than Euro-Americans and seven years longer than African-Americans, with a life expectancy of 80.6 years.,^[35] in contrast to the on average lower life expectancy of most Latin American countries. These variations among ethnic groups may be ascribed to differing economic circumstances of the groups, and in the United States, notably differing access to health care. It may also be ascribed to different cultural patterns of eating or diet that may cross international lines and explain the variation within ethnic groups in a multiethnic society such as the United States.

Climate may also have an effect, and the way data is collected may also influence the figures.

Economic circumstances may also affect life expectancy. For example, in the United Kingdom, life expectancy in the wealthiest areas is several years longer than in the poorest areas. This may reflect factors such as diet and lifestyle as well as access to medical care. It may also reflect a selective effect: people with chronic life-threatening illnesses are less likely to become wealthy or to reside in affluent areas.^[36] In Glasgow the disparity is among the highest in the world with life expectancy for males in the heavily deprived Calton standing at 54 – 28 years less than in the affluent area of Lenzie, which is only eight kilometres away.^[37][38]

The relationship between economic circumstance and life expectancy is not clear-cut, however. A study by José A. Tapia Granados and Ana Diez Roux at the University of Michigan found that life expectancy actually increased during the Great Depression, and during recessions and depressions in general.^[39] The authors suggest that when people are working extra hard during good economic times, they undergo more stress, exposure to pollution, and likelihood of injury among other longevity-limiting factors.

Life expectancy is also likely to be affected by exposure to high levels of highway air pollution or industrial air pollution.^{[citation needed]} This is one way that occupation can have a major effect on life expectancy. Coal miners (and in prior generations, asbestos cutters) often have shorter than average life expectancies. Other factors affecting an individual's life expectancy are genetic disorders, obesity, access to health care, diet, exercise, tobacco smoking, drug use and excessive alcohol use.

Sex differences[link]

Comparison of male and female life expectancy at birth for countries and territories as defined in the 2011 CIA Factbook, with selected bubbles labelled. The dotted line corresponds to equal female and male life expectancy. The apparent 3D volumes of the bubbles are linearly proportional to their population.^[40][41]

Women tend to have a lower mortality rate at every age. In the womb, male fetuses have a higher mortality rate (babies are conceived in a ratio estimated to be from 107 to 170 males to 100 females, but the ratio at birth in the United States is only 105 males to 100 females).^[42] Among the smallest premature babies (those under 2 pounds or 900 g) females again have a higher survival rate. At the other extreme, about 90% of individuals aged 110 are female. The difference in life expectancy between men and women in the United States dropped from 7.8 years in 1979 to 5.3 years in 2005, with women expected to live to age 80.1 in 2005.^[43]

In the past, mortality rates for females in child-bearing age groups were higher than for males at the same age. This is no longer the case, and female human life expectancy is considerably higher than that of men. The reasons for this are not entirely certain. Traditional arguments tend to favor socio-environmental factors: historically, men have generally consumed more tobacco, alcohol and drugs than females in most societies, and are more likely to die from many associated diseases such as lung cancer, tuberculosis and cirrhosis of the liver.^[44] Men are also more likely to die from injuries, whether unintentional (such as car accidents) or intentional (suicide, violence, war).^[44] A 2005 study found that the level of patriarchy predicts men's mortality rates. High levels of patriarchy were associated with high levels of male mortality; low levels of patriarchy were correlated with low mortality levels. The researchers argue that while patriarchy grants men certain privileges over women, it also promotes gender stereotypes which harm men.^[45] Men are also more likely to die from most of the leading causes of death (some already stated above) than women. Some of these in the United States include: cancer of the respiratory system, motor vehicle accidents, suicide, cirrhosis of the liver, emphysema, and coronary heart disease.^[7] These far outweigh the female mortality rate from breast cancer and cervical cancer etc.

Some argue that shorter male life expectancy is merely another manifestation of the general rule, seen in all mammal species, that larger individuals tend on average to have shorter lives.^[46][47] This biological difference occurs because women have more resistance to infections and degenerative diseases.^[7]

In her extensive review of the existing literature, Kalben concluded that the fact that women live longer than men was observed at least as far back as 1750 and that, with relatively equal treatment, today males in all parts of the world experience greater mortality than females. Of 72 selected causes of death, only 6 yielded greater female than male age-adjusted death rates in 1998 in the United States. With the exception of birds, for almost all of the animal species studied, the males have higher mortality than the females. Evidence suggests that the sex mortality differential in humans is due to both biological/genetic and environmental/behavioral risk and protective factors.^[48]

Centenarians[link]

In developed countries, the number of centenarians is increasing at approximately 5.5% per year, which means doubling the centenarian population every 13 years, pushing it from some 455,000 in 2009 to 4.1 million in 2050.^[49] Japan is the country with the highest ratio of centenarians (347 for every 1 million inhabitants in September 2010). Shimane prefecture had an estimated 743 centenarians per million inhabitants.^[50]

In the United States, the number of centenarians grew from 32,194 in 1980 to 71,944 in November 2010 (232 centenarians per million inhabitants).^[51]

Mentally ill[link]

Adults with serious mental illness (SMI) die about 25 years earlier, on average at age 51 versus 76 for Americans generally, primarily due to cardiovascular disease.^[52][53]

Evolution and aging rate[link]

Various species of plants and animals, including humans, have different lifespans. There is an evolutionary theory of aging, and general consensus in the academic community of evolutionary theorists; however the theory doesn't work well in practice, and there are many unexplained exceptions. Evolutionary theory states that organisms that, by virtue of their defenses or lifestyle, live for long periods whilst avoiding accidents, disease, predation, etc., are likely to have genes that code for slow aging - which often translates to good cellular repair. This is theorized to be true because if predation or accidental deaths prevent most individuals from living to an old age, then there will be less natural selection to increase intrinsic life span.^[54] The finding was supported in a classic study of opossums by Austad,^[55] however the opposite relationship was found in an equally prominent study of guppies by Reznick.^[56][57]

One prominent and very popular theory attributes aging to a tight budget for food energy called caloric restriction.^[58] Caloric restriction observed in many animals (most notably mice and rats), shows a near doubling of life span due to a very limited calorific intake. Support for this theory has been bolstered by several new studies linking lower basal metabolic rate to increased life expectancy.^[59][60][61] This is the key to why animals like Giant Tortoises can live so long.^[62] Studies of humans with 100+ year life spans have shown a link to decreased thyroid activity, resulting in their lowered metabolic rate.^[63]

In a broad survey of zoo animals, no relationship was found between the fertility of the animal and its life span.^[64]

Calculating life expectancies[link]

The starting point for calculating life expectancies is the age-specific death rates of the population members. In the past, a very simple model of age-specific mortality used the Gompertz function, although these days more sophisticated methods are used.^[65]

In cases where the amount of data is relatively small, the most common methods are to fit a mathematical formula, such as an extension of the Gompertz function, to the data, or to look at an established mortality table previously derived for a larger population and make a simple adjustment to it (e.g. multiply by a constant factor) to fit the data.

With a large amount of data, one looks at the mortality rates actually experienced at each age, and applies smoothing (e.g. by cubic splines) to iron out any apparently random statistical fluctuations from one year of age to the next.

While the data required are easily identified in the case of humans, the computation of life expectancy of industrial products and wild animals involves more indirect techniques. The life expectancy and demography of wild animals are often estimated by capturing, marking and recapturing them.^[66] The life of a product, more often termed shelf life is also computed using similar methods. In the case of long-lived components such as those used in critical applications, such as in aircraft methods such as accelerated aging are used to model the life expectancy of a component.^[3]

The age-specific death rates are calculated separately for separate groups of data which are believed to have different mortality rates (e.g. males and females, and perhaps smokers and non-smokers if data is available separately for those groups) and are then used to calculate a life table, from which one can calculate the probability of surviving to each age. In actuarial notation the probability of surviving from age x to age x+n is denoted Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \,_np_x\!

and the probability of dying during age x (i.e. between ages x and x+1) is denoted Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): q_x\!

. For example, if 10% of a group of people alive at their 90th birthday die before their 91st birthday, then the age-specific death probability at age 90 would be 10%. Note that this is a probability rather than a mortality rate.

The life expectancy at age x, denoted Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \,e_x\! , is then calculated by adding up the probabilities to survive to every age. This is the expected number of complete years lived (one may think of it as the number of birthdays they celebrate).

Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): e_x =\sum_{t=1}^{\infty}\,_tp_x = \sum_{t=0}^{\infty}t \,_tp_x q_{x+t}

Because age is rounded down to the last birthday, on average people live half a year beyond their final birthday, so half a year is added to the life expectancy to calculate the full life expectancy. (This is denoted by Failed to parse (Missing texvc executable; please see math/README to configure.): \,e_x\!

with a circle over the "e".)

Life expectancy is by definition an arithmetic mean. It can also be calculated by integrating the survival curve from ages 0 to positive infinity (or equivalently to the maximum lifespan, sometimes called 'omega'). For an extinct or completed cohort (all people born in year 1850, for example), of course, it can simply be calculated by averaging the ages at death. For cohorts with some survivors, it is estimated by using mortality experience in recent years. These estimates are called period cohort life expectancies.

It is important to note that this statistic is usually based on past mortality experience, and assumes that the same age-specific mortality rates will continue into the future. Thus such life expectancy figures need to be adjusted for temporal trends before calculating how long a currently living individual of a particular age is expected to live. Period life expectancy remains a commonly used statistic to summarize the current health status of a population.

However for some purposes, such as pensions calculations, it is usual to adjust the life table used, thus assuming that age-specific death rates will continue to decrease over the years, as they have done in the past. This is often done by simply extrapolating past trends; however some models do exist to account for the evolution of mortality (e.g., the Lee-Carter model^[67]).

As discussed above, on an individual basis, there are a number of factors that have been shown to correlate with a longer life. Factors that are associated with variations in life expectancy include family history, marital status, economic status, physique, exercise, diet, drug use including smoking and alcohol consumption, disposition, education, environment, sleep, climate, and health care.^[7]

Life expectancy forecasting[link]

Forecasting life expectancy and mortality forms an important subdivision of demography. Future trends in life expectancy have huge implications for old-age support programs like U.S. Social Security and pension systems, because the cash flow in these systems depends on the number of recipients still living (along with the rate of return on the investments or the tax rate in PAYGO systems). With longer life expectancies, these systems see increased cash outflow; if these systems underestimate increases in life-expectancies, they won't be prepared for the large payments that will inevitably occur as humans live longer and longer.

Life expectancy forecasting usually is based on two different approaches:

• Forecasting the life expectancy directly, generally using ARIMA or other time series extrapolation procedures: This approach has the advantage of simplicity, but it cannot account for changes in mortality at specific ages, and the forecasted number cannot be used to derive other life table results. Analyses and forecasts using this approach can be done with any common statistical/ mathematical software package, like R, SAS, Matlab, or SPSS.

• Forecasting age specific death rates and computing the life expectancy from the results with life table methods: This approach is usually more complex than simply forecasting life expectancy because the analyst must deal with correlated age specific mortality rates, but it seems to be more robust than simple one dimensional time series approaches. This approach also yields a set of age specific rates that may be used to derive other measures, like survival curves or life expectancies at different ages. The most important approach within this group is the Lee-Carter model,^[68] which uses the singular value decomposition on a set of transformed age-specific mortality rates to reduce their dimensionality to a single time series, forecasts that time series, and then recovers a full set of age-specific mortality rates from that forecasted value. Software for this approach include Professor Rob J. Hyndman's R package and UC Berkeley's LCFIT system.

Policy uses of life expectancy[link]

This section requires expansion.

Life expectancy is one of the factors in measuring the Human Development Index (HDI) of each nation, along with adult literacy, education, and standard of living.^[69]

Life expectancy is also used in describing the physical quality of life of an area.

Life expectancies are also used when determining the value of a life settlement, a life insurance policy sold for a cash asset.

Life expectancy vs. life span[link]

Life expectancy is often confused with life span to the point that they are nearly synonyms; when people hear 'life expectancy was 35 years' they often interpret this as meaning that people of that time or place had short life spans.^[70] One such example can be seen in the In Search of... episode "The Man Who Would Not Die" (About Count of St. Germain) where it is stated "Evidence recently discovered in the British Museum indicates that St. Germain may have well been the long lost third son of Rákóczi born in Transylvania in 1694. If he died in Germany in 1784, he lived 90 years. The average life expectancy in the 18th century was 35 years. Fifty was a ripe old age. Ninety... was forever."

This ignores the fact that the life expectancy generally quoted is the at birth number which is an average that includes all the babies that die before their first year of life as well as people that die from disease and war. The genetics of humans and rate of aging were no different in preindustrial societies than today, but people frequently died young because of untreatable diseases, accidents, and malnutrition. Many women did not survive childbirth, and when a person did reach old age they were likely to succumb quickly to health problems.

It can be argued that it is better to compare life expectancies of the period after adulthood to get a better handle on life span.^[71] Even during childhood life expectancy can take a huge jump as seen in the Roman Life Expectancy table at the University of Texas where at birth the life expectancy was 25 but at the age of 5 it jumped to 48. Studies like Plymouth Plantation; "Dead at Forty" and Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2004 similarly show a dramatic increase in life expectancy once adulthood was reached.

See also[link]

Increasing life expectancy[link]

• Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS)
• John Sperling
• Life extension
• Longevity
• Rejuvenation
• Public health
• Infant mortality

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Leonid A. Gavrilov & Natalia S. Gavrilova (1991), The Biology of Life Span: A Quantitative Approach. New York: Harwood Academic Publisher, ISBN 3-7186-4983-7

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Life expectancy

• Charts for all countries
• Rank Order - Life expectancy at birth from the CIA's World Factbook.
• CDC year-by-year life expectancy figures for USA from the USA Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics.
• Life expectancy in Roman times from the University of Texas.
• Animal lifespans: Animal Lifespans from Tesarta Online (Internet Archive); The Life Span of Animals from Dr Bob's All Creatures Site.

Hans Rosling
Rosling at the 2012 Time 100 gala
Born	(1948-07-27) July 27, 1948 (age 63)
Institutions	Karolinska Institute
Alma mater	Uppsala University, St. John's Medical College
Known for	Gapminder Foundation and Trendalyzer

Hans Rosling (born 27 July 1948^[1] in Uppsala, Sweden) is a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. He is Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institute^[2] and co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system.

Study and career[link]

From 1967 to 1974 Rosling studied statistics and medicine at Uppsala University, and in 1972 he studied public health at St. John's Medical College, Bangalore. He became a licenced physician in 1976 and from 1979 to 1981 he served as District Medical Officer in Nacala in northern Mozambique.

On 21 August 1981, Rosling discovered an outbreak of konzo, a paralytic disease,^[3][4] and the investigations that followed earned him a Ph.D. degree at Uppsala University in 1986. He spent two decades studying outbreaks of this disease in remote rural areas across Africa and supervised more than ten Ph.D. students^{[citation needed]}. Outbreaks occur among hunger-stricken rural populations in Africa where a diet dominated by insufficiently processed cassava results in simultaneous malnutrition and high dietary cyanide intake.^[4]

Rosling's research has also focused on other links between economic development, agriculture, poverty and health^[5] in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He has been health adviser to WHO, UNICEF and several aid agencies. In 1993 he was one of the initiators of Médecins Sans Frontières in Sweden. At Karolinska Institutet he was head of the Division of International Health (IHCAR) from 2001 to 2007. As chairman of Karolinska International Research and Training Committee (1998–2004) he started health research collaborations with universities in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. He started new courses on Global Health and co-authored a textbook on Global Health that promotes a fact-based world view.

Rosling presented the television documentary The Joy of Stats, which was broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Four in December 2010.^[6]

Gapminder[link]

Rosling co-founded the Gapminder Foundation together with his son Ola Rosling and daughter-in-law Anna Rosling Rönnlund. Gapminder developed the Trendalyzer software that converts international statistics into moving, interactive graphics. His lectures using Gapminder graphics to visualise world development have won awards.^[7] The interactive animations are freely available from the Foundation's website. On 16 March 2007 Google acquired the Trendalyzer software with the intention to scale it up and make it freely available for public statistics. In 2008 Google made available a Motion Chart Google Gadget and in 2009 the Public Data Explorer.^[8]

Rosling is also a sword swallower, as demonstrated in the final moments of his second talk at the TED conference.^[9] In 2009 he was listed as one of 100 leading global thinkers by Foreign Policy Magazine,^[10] and in 2011 as one of 100 most creative people in business by the Fast Company Magazine.^[11] In 2011 he was elected member of the Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Awards[link]

Hans Rosling at the Swedish pavilion of Expo 2010 in Shanghai

• 2007 – Statistician of the Year Award from the Swedish Association for Statistics
• 2007 – Jubilee Prize from the Swedish Medical Society
• 2007 – Knowledge Prize from the National Encyclopaedia of Sweden
• 2008 – Speaker of the Year from the Swedish Event Academy
• 2008 – The Big Debate Award from Dagens Medicine
• 2009 – Georg and Greta Borgstrom Award from the Swedish Royal Academy of Agriculture and Forestry
• 2010 – Illis Quorum, Highest Award conferred by the Government of Sweden
• 2010 – The Grand Prize from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
• 2010 – Gold Medal from Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences
• 2010 – World Technology Award in Design together with Ola Rosling & Anna Rosling Rönnlund
• 2010 – The Gannon Award for the Continued Pursuit of Human Advancement (US)^[12]
• 2011 - Grierson 2011 Award for the Best British Science Documentary, presenter in "The Joy of Stats"
• 2012 - Time 100 most influential people list

Selected publications[link]

• Thorson, A.; Ragnarsson, A.; Rosling, H.; Ekström, A. (2010). "Male circumcision reduces HIV transmission. The risk of transmission from woman to man is halved". Lakartidningen 107 (46): 2881–2883. PMID 21197783.  edit
• Hanson, S.; Thorson, A.; Rosling, H.; Örtendahl, C.; Hanson, C.; Killewo, J.; Ekström, A. M. (2009). Husereau, Don. ed. "Estimating the Capacity for ART Provision in Tanzania with the Use of Data on Staff Productivity and Patient Losses". PLoS ONE 4 (4): e5294. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0005294. PMC 2667213. PMID 19381270. //www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=2667213.  edit
• Von Schreeb, J.; Riddez, L.; Samnegård, H.; Rosling, H. (2008). "Foreign field hospitals in the recent sudden-onset disasters in Iran, Haiti, Indonesia, and Pakistan". Prehospital and disaster medicine : the official journal of the National Association of EMS Physicians and the World Association for Emergency and Disaster Medicine in association with the Acute Care Foundation 23 (2): 144–151; discussion 151–3. PMID 18557294.  edit
• Schell, C. O.; Reilly, M.; Rosling, H.; Peterson, S.; Ekström, A. M. (2007). "Socioeconomic determinants of infant mortality: A worldwide study of 152 low-, middle-, and high-income countries". Scandinavian Journal of Public Health 35 (3): 288–297. DOI:10.1080/14034940600979171. PMID 17530551.  edit
• Von Schreeb, J.; Rosling, H.; Garfield, R. (2007). "Mortality in Iraq". The Lancet 369 (9556): 101. DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(07)60058-0. PMID 17223462.  edit
• Elrayah, H.; Eltom, M.; Bedri, A.; Belal, A.; Rosling, H.; Ostenson, C. (2005). "Economic burden on families of childhood type 1 diabetes in urban Sudan". Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice 70 (2): 159–165. DOI:10.1016/j.diabres.2005.03.034. PMID 15919129.  edit
• Thanh, H. T. T.; Jiang, G. X.; Van, T. N.; Minh, D. P. T.; Rosling, H.; Wasserman, D. (2005). "Attempted suicide in Hanoi, Vietnam". Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 40 (1): 64–71. DOI:10.1007/s00127-005-0849-6. PMID 15624077.  edit
• Rosling, H. (2004). "New map of world health is needed. North and South is changed to healthy and ill and West to rich and poor". Lakartidningen 101 (3): 198–201. PMID 14763091.  edit

References[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Hans Rosling

External links[link]

• Hans Rosling on Twitter
• Hans Rosling shows the best stats you've ever seen at the 2006 TED Conference in Monterey, CA highlighting novel ways of presenting global statistics.
• Hans Rosling's new insights on poverty, from TED2007, featuring a surprise ending. (video)
• Video of Hans Rosling speech at the OECD World Forum in Istanbul
• Hans Rosling's blog
• Ola Rosling giving a Gapminder presentation at Google (video)
• Motion Chart Google Gadget
• Hans Rosling: Global health expert; data visionary profile on TED.com

Andrew Marr
At the 2009 BAFTA awards
Born	Andrew William Stevenson Marr (1959-07-31) 31 July 1959 (age 52) Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Education	Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Occupation	Journalist, presenter, political commentator
Notable credit(s)	BBC News The Andrew Marr Show
Salary	£580,000[1]
Spouse	Jackie Ashley (m. 1987-present)
Children	Son and 2 daughters

Andrew William Stevenson Marr (born 31 July 1959) is a British journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years until May 1998, and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 until 2005. He began hosting a political programme Sunday AM, now called The Andrew Marr Show, on Sunday mornings on BBC One from September 2005. Marr also hosts the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week.

In 2007 he presented a political history of post-war Britain on BBC Two, Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain, followed by a prequel in 2009 - Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain focusing on the period between 1901 and 1945. In 2010 he presented a series, Andrew Marr's Megacities, examining the life, development and challenges of some of the largest cities in the world. In early 2012 he presented The Diamond Queen, a 3 part series about the 60-year reign of Queen Elizabeth II.^[2]

Early life[link]

Marr was born on 31 July 1959 in Glasgow, Scotland^[3] to Donald and Valerie Marr. His father was an investment trust manager and Marr was educated in Scotland at the independent High School of Dundee, Craigflower School and at Loretto, also an independent school in Musselburgh, East Lothian, where he was a member of Pinkie House. He went on to study English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge gaining first class honours.^[3][4]

He was once a member of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. At Cambridge, Marr says he was a "raving leftie", and he acquired the nickname 'Red Andy'.^[5][6]

Newspaper career[link]

Marr joined The Scotsman as a trainee and junior business reporter in 1981. He became a parliamentary correspondent for the newspaper in 1984, moving to London at this time, and then a political correspondent in 1986. During this period, Marr met the political journalist Anthony Bevins, who became Marr's mentor and close friend. Bevins was responsible for Marr's first appointment at The Independent as a member of the newspaper's launch staff.

Marr left shortly afterwards, and joined The Economist, where he contributed the weekly "Bagehot" political column and ultimately became the magazine's political editor in 1988. Marr has remarked that his time at The Economist "changed me quite a lot" and "made me question a lot of my assumptions".^[7] He admits that while working at The Economist he earned himself the jocular nickname ‘Tearound Tessa’ because of his enthusiasm for trips to the canteen on behalf of his colleagues.^[8]

Marr returned to The Independent as the newspaper's political editor in 1992, and became its editor in 1996. His period as editor coincided with a particularly turbulent time at the paper. Faced with price cutting by the Murdoch-owned Times, sales had begun to decline, and Marr made two attempts to arrest the slide. He made use of bold 'poster-style' front pages, and then in 1996 radically re-designed the paper along a mainland European model, with Gill Sans headline fonts, and stories being themed and grouped together, rather than according to strict news value. This tinkering ultimately proved disastrous. The limited advertising budget meant the paper's re-launch struggled to get noticed, and when it did, it was mocked for reinterpreting its original marketing slogan 'It Is - Are You' to read 'It's changed - have you?'. The response from some was that many existing readers had indeed changed - to The Guardian. At the beginning of 1998 Marr was sacked. According to one version of events he was sacked after refusing to implement a further round of redundancies. The author and journalist Nick Cohen writes that Tony Blair's director of communications, Alastair Campbell demanded that David Montgomery, The Independent's publisher, sack Marr over an article which compared Blair with his predecessor John Major. Blair, in the offending article, had written "On the day we remember the legend that St George slayed a dragon to protect England, some will argue that there is another dragon to be slayed: Europe." Marr's offence was to suggest Blair was speaking in bad faith, and that the phrase "some will argue" was a weasel phrase to create distance from an otherwise xenophobic article.^[9]

Three months later he returned to the Independent. Tony O'Reilly had increased his stake in the paper and bought out owners Mirror Group. O'Reilly, who had a high regard for Marr, asked him to collaborate as co-editor with Rosie Boycott, in an arrangement whereby Marr would edit the comment pages, and Boycott would have overall control of the news pages.

Many pundits predicted the arrangement would not last, and two months later Boycott left to replace Richard Addis as editor of the Daily Express. Marr was sole editor again, but only for one week. Simon Kelner, who had worked on the paper when it was first launched accepted the editorship, and asked Marr to stay on as a political columnist. Kelner was not Marr's "cup of tea" Marr observed later, and he left the paper for the final time in May 1998.^[10]

At the BBC[link]

Marr wrote as a columnist for The Daily Express and The Observer before being appointed BBC Political Editor in May 2000. Like his predecessor-but-one John Cole and his famous herringbone overcoat, he soon developed a trademark style, characterised by much gesticulation, as sent up in the comedy impersonation programme Dead Ringers where the impressionists use ridiculously long plastic arms when portraying him. He also became known and widely praised for his ability to describe the background to Westminster gossip and intrigue and explain to viewers and listeners how it would affect their lives. A great believer in the view that "politics matters", Marr championed the democratic process and saw it as part of his role as Political Editor of the BBC to help make politics meaningful and relevant for many people who tended to see politics as the preserve of a remote, largely male and middle aged Westminster clique.

Among his personal scoops as Political Editor were the second resignation of Peter Mandelson, and the interview in late 2004 in which Tony Blair told him that he would not seek a fourth term as Prime Minister should he win the forthcoming general election. Marr was criticised for some of his on air statements during this period. John Pilger claimed that Marr "rejoiced at the vindication of Blair who, he said, had promised 'to take Baghdad without a bloodbath'" during the second Iraq war in March 2003. Pilger has attacked Marr further over an interview with Tony Blair, in which Blair was promoting his memoirs. Pilger is critical towards Marr for not questioning Blair on whether he had colluded with George Bush to invade Iraq and for not bringing up the legality of the invasion.^[11]

During his time as political editor Marr assumed various presentational roles, and announced in 2005 that following the 2005 General Election, he would step down as Political Editor to spend more time with his family. He was replaced as Political Editor by Nick Robinson. In September 2005, he moved to a new role presenting the BBC's Sunday morning flagship news programme Sunday AM, known as The Andrew Marr Show since September 2007;^[12] the slot was previously filled with Breakfast with Frost and hosted by Sir David Frost. Marr also hosts the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week.

In May and June 2007, the BBC broadcast Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain. He presented the five one-hour documentaries, and chronicled the history of Britain from 1945 to 2007. Unsold copies of the book of the series, a best seller, were recalled in March 2009 by publishers Macmillan when legal action was taken over false claims that domestic violence campaigner Erin Pizzey had been a member of The Angry Brigade terrorist group.^[13][14] According to her own account, in a Guardian interview in 2001, Pizzey had been present at a meeting when they discussed their intention of bombing Biba, a fashion store, and threatened to report their activities to the police.^[15][16] Damages were paid to Pizzey and Marr's book was republished with the error removed.^[17][18]

Marr has written several books on politics and journalism, notably state-of-the-nation reflection The Day Britain Died (2000) and My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism (2004). The former was a three-part television series shown after Newsnight on BBC Two from 31 January to 2 February 2000. He has also written several articles for the British political magazine Prospect.

In 2008, he presented the prime time BBC One series Britain From Above. The following year, he contributed a three-part series called Darwin's Dangerous Idea to the BBC Darwin Season, celebrating the bicentenary of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his theory of evolution. He played a small role as himself in a Doctor Who episode, "World War Three"; reporting Slitheen entering 10 Downing Street, he was noted as himself in the credits. In late 2009, BBC Two broadcast his six-part television series on British politics in the first half of the 20th century Andrew Marr's The Making of Modern Britain.^[19]

In September 2009 on the Sunday before the Labour Party conference in Brighton, Marr interviewed Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Towards the end of the interview, Marr told Brown he wanted to ask about:^[20]

The Prime Minister responded: "No. I think this is the sort of questioning which is all too often entering the lexicon of British politics." Marr was later heavily criticised by Labour politicians,^[21] the media and fellow political journalists for what was described as a vague question which relied on its source being a singular entry on a political blog.^[22] In later interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy of Channel 4 News, John Ward, the author of the Not Born Yesterday blog, admitted that he has no proof to back up the claim.^[23]

Politics[link]

Wikinews has related news: Andrew Marr angers bloggers, describing them as 'inadequate, pimpled and single'

Marr has written about the need to remain impartial and "studiously neutral" whilst delivering news reports and "convey fact, and nothing more".^[24] Marr responded to criticism as "pernicious anti-journalism".^[25]

In the Daily Telegraph he claimed to be a libertarian when discussing his conflicting views on smoking bans.^[26] However, writing in The Guardian, he said "And the final answer, frankly, is the vigorous use of state power to coerce and repress. It may be my Presbyterian background, but I firmly believe that repression can be a great, civilising instrument for good. Stamp hard on certain 'natural' beliefs for long enough and you can almost kill them off. The police are first in line to be burdened further, but a new Race Relations Act will impose the will of the state on millions of other lives too."^[27]

At an October 2006 BBC seminar discussing impartiality, Marr highlighted alleged bias within the BBC. He stated: "The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities, and gay people. It has a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias."^[28][29]

Marr spoke at the Cheltenham Literary Festival on 10 October 2010 about political blogging. He claimed that "[a] lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people."^[30]

Other work[link]

Marr has helped support the Sense-National Deafblind and Rubella Association, and was the face of a Sense direct marketing appeal. He has also been involved with the charity Common Purpose UK.^{[citation needed]} Marr is President of the Galapagos Conservation Trust.

Personal life[link]

Family[link]

Marr lives in East Sheen, London, with his wife, the political journalist Jackie Ashley of The Guardian, whom he married in August 1987 in Surrey.^[4] She is a daughter of the Labour life peer Lord Ashley of Stoke. The couple have a son and two daughters.^[31]

Privacy injunction[link]

On 28 June 2008, Richard Ingrams reported in The Independent that Marr had obtained a High Court injunction preventing disclosure in the media of "private" information. The order was anonymised, preventing press reporting. The injunction was not mentioned in the UK media until Private Eye commented on it.^[32]

On 26 April 2011, following legal action by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, an interview with Marr was published in the Daily Mail, in which he revealed that the super-injunction had covered the reporting of an extra-marital affair with a female journalist.^[33] Marr said that he had believed that a child of the journalist was his, but had learned through a DNA test that it was not. He commented: "I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists. Am I embarrassed by it? Yes. Am I uneasy about it? Yes. But at the time there was a crisis in my marriage and I believed there was a young child involved. I also had my own family to think about, and I believed this story was nobody else's business."^[34] Hislop had filed a court challenge earlier in April 2011, and described the super-injunction as "pretty rank".^[35]

Awards[link]

In 1995 he was named Columnist of the Year at both the What the Papers Say Awards and the British Press Awards, and received the Journalist Award in the Channel 4 Political Awards of 2001.^[36]

He was considered for honorary membership of The Coterie for 2007.^[37] Marr has received two British Academy Television Awards: the Richard Dimbleby Award at the 2004 ceremony^[38] and the award for Best Specialist Factual Programme (for his History of Modern Britain) at the 2008 ceremony.^[39]

Marr and his wife were both awarded honorary doctorates from Staffordshire University in July 2009.^[40]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Press Office — Andrew Marr — BBC biography
• 'Marr quits as BBC political chief' — BBC News'
• TV is less up itself than newspapers — The Guardian
• Transcript - The Big Idea - BBC, 1996