The average life expectancy in Nanjing has exceeded 80 years for the first time. But Nanjingers can’t expect to live longer than anyone else in Jiangsu Province. Those are the main findings from data in the 2020 census recently revealed by the Provincial Bureau of Statistics.
In the data released yesterday, 9 February, the total population of Jiangsu at the end of 2021 stood at at 85.054 million, an increase of 281,000 on a year earlier.
Among the permanent residents of Jiangsu, the urban rural breakdown was 62.8889 million vs 22.1651 million, respectively.
It should be noted that those numbers come from sample survey data, approved by the National Bureau of statistics, not the 2020 census.
That’s the census which also now tells us that the average life expectancy in Jiangsu has reached 79.32 years, representing an increase of 2.69 years on the data in the census back in 2010.
So just where are all these people who live so long?
In just two cities in Jiangsu can people expect to live past 80; Suzhou and Nanjing. The former in fact comes out on top, where people should get to be 80.29 years old, while us Nanjingers trail the Suzhounese, making it to an average, ripe-old age of 80.15.
As for the rest of the province, cities’ life expectancies, in descending order, go Wuxi (79.96), Changzhou (79.87), Nantong (79.58), Zhenjiang (79.41), Xuzhou (78.88), Taizhou (78.79), Yangzhou (78.77), Yancheng (78.40), Lianyungang (78.32), Huai’an (78.25) and Suqian (78.18).
Broadly speaking, the more developed the city, the longer people live.
In terms of gender, it is well known that women generally live longer than men. In Jiangsu, females outlive males by around 4.5 years, reports Nanjing Daily.
At opposite ends of the spectrum, that all means women in Suzhou have a life expectancy of 82.79 years, while men over in Suqian will on average live to be 76.02 years old.
The increase in the average life expectancy for the population of Jiangsu is mainly down to the Province’s rapid economic and social development. Therein, continuous improvements in living standards and the healthcare system are the main driving forces.
Putting this in some kind of perspective are comparative numbers from the USA. There, figures released by the National Centre for Health Statistics show the life expectancy for American men in 2020 was 74.2 years, while for American women it was 79.9 years, decreases of 2.1 and 1.5 years, respectively, on a year earlier.
While the comparison is for the USA as a whole against only the most developed province of China, there can still be no doubting that fact that people in Jiangsu now live longer than the average American!
