Great expectations

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Our average age at death soars in the last third of life. In other words: The longer you live, the longer you’re likely to live. “As you work your way through the age range, you’re essentially weeding out the frail from the population,” explains Bob Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “When you get to the older ages, you’re left with the more robust in the population. And that continues as you move up.” The first deadly hurdles occur in year one, when around 30,000 babies succumb to the likes of congenital defects and prematurity. In the teens and twenties, accidents and violence peak. For men, these are especially risky years—ages 20 to 24 are known as the “accident hump” (and may be a reason women live longer).
—Text by J. Abbasi, in the latest issue of Fortune Magazine