| A few things.
First, recent research suggests mortality related to cigarette smoking is a major reason for relatively low US life expectancy. Sure, European countries smoke more heavily than the US NOW, but that was not true in the past, and we are still observing the effects of this today.
Second, the CIA world factbook is not the most trusted source on this topic, especially since these represent estimates rather than calculations for many countries. This is not a criticism of the quiz, but a reminder to not overinterpret the list.
Third, values for the city-state countries (monaco, andorra, liechtenstein, san marino) should be viewed with extreme caution. For example, monaco has only 30,000 people, which means that they will likely only observe around 360 deaths per year, not NEARLY enough to make an accurate life expectancy calculation. Furthermore, in order to observe enough deaths at some of the younger ages, they would likely have to pool data across 10 years or more. And with such small samples, they are subject to wide variation. In my opinion, the list would better if only countries with population>=1 million were included. |
Countries of former Yugoslavia
European Borders
One of Five Countries (Area)
