The lottery of birth can be unforigiving at times. None of us get to choose where in the world we come into being, but for those born on the list of countries below, life is hard from the moment they arrive. Simply and harshly put, death comes to these poor souls very early. People in these countries live, on average, nearly 50 years less than those living in countries with the highest life expectancy. Huge problems like HIV infections, high infant mortality rates, and societal violence impact young people and drive the life expectancy downward. The results are the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality at each age remains constant in the future. Each entry includes total population, as well as both the male and female components.
- 1. Botswana – 32.3
- 2. M0zamique – 33.7
- 3. Swaziland – 34.2
- 4. ZImbabwe – 35.3
- 5. Malawi - 35.6
- 6. Namibia – 36.1
- 7. Zambia – 37.4
- 8. Rwanda – 38
- 9. Central African Republic (the Congo) – 43.1
- 10. Ethiopia – 43.3
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It’s so sad to see people living 50 years younger than others for no other reason than where they were born. What breaks my heart even more is that those 30 some years that these people are given are surely diificult and painful. Such a shame that we are not brothers and sisters in the family of humanity. We’re all just strangers…
Stunning numbers. And all, but Ethiopia, in the southern half of Africa. Its hard to imagine there is not some kind of global template that institutes this as a necessitating result of how we operate our world.