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How long will I live? The 19 questions, and what each answer is worth
Most life expectancy quizzes will not tell you how they weigh your answers. This is the entire scoring sheet, published so you can argue with it.
Answer them in the app in two to three minutes.
How to read the numbers
Each figure below is a shift in life expectancy in years, measured against the neutral middle answer, for a person around age 50. They come from published hazard ratios converted to life years following Pang and Hanley, American Journal of Epidemiology 2021.
Three things happen to these raw figures before they reach your date, and they matter more than the figures themselves:
- Grouping. Correlated answers sit in one group. Within a group the largest effect counts in full and every other counts at half weight, because a bad diet and a high body mass index are largely the same finding twice.
- Damping. The combined total runs linearly up to eight years and is then compressed toward a hard ceiling of 18 years. Nobody gets a 40 year swing out of a questionnaire.
- Age shrinkage. The whole adjustment is scaled by age: full weight at 35, three quarters at 60, and less than a third at 90. Habits have less room to change an outcome the closer that outcome gets.
The result of that pipeline is calibrated against Li et al., Circulation 2018, which found a best against worst spread of roughly 12 to 14 years at age 50 across five lifestyle factors.
Questions 1 to 3
The baseline: who and where you are
| Question | What it does | Source |
|---|---|---|
| When were you born? | Sets your exact age, which selects your row in the life table. Remaining life expectancy is read for that age and interpolated between whole years. | SSA Period Life Table 2022 |
| What is your biological sex? | Selects the male or female column. In the 2022 table a newborn boy can expect 74.7 further years, a newborn girl 80.2. | SSA 2022, UN WPP 2024 |
| Where do you live? | Shifts the whole level up or down to your country, and the shift fades with age as you outlive the gap. | UN World Population Prospects 2024, 234 countries and territories |
Questions 4 to 19
The sixteen that move the number
| Question | Answers and years | Study |
|---|---|---|
| How tall and heavy are you? Body mass index |
Under 18.5: -2.5 · 18.5 to 25: 0 · 25 to 30: -1 · 30 to 35: -3.6 · 35 to 40: -6 · 40 and over: -9 | Global BMI Mortality Collaboration, Lancet 2016 |
| Do you smoke? | Never: 0 · Quit before 40: -1 · Quit at 40 or later: -3 · Fewer than 10 a day: -7 · Ten or more a day: -10 | Doll et al., BMJ 2004; Jha et al., NEJM 2013 |
| How much alcohol do you drink? | None: 0 · Light: -0.5 · Moderate: -2 · Heavy: -5 | GBD 2016 Alcohol Collaborators, Lancet 2018; Wood et al., Lancet 2018. No bonus for moderate drinking. |
| How much do you move? | Sedentary: -3.4 · Some: -1.6 · Meets guidelines: 0 · High: +1.1 | Moore et al., PLoS Medicine 2012 |
| Do you train your muscles? | Never: -0.5 · Occasionally: +0.5 · Regularly: +1.5 | Celis-Morales et al., BMJ 2018 |
| How many hours a day do you sit? | Few: 0 · Medium: -0.5 · Many: -1.5 | Ekelund et al., Lancet 2016 |
| How long do you usually sleep? | Short: -1.5 · Below optimal: -0.8 · Optimal: 0 · Long: -1.5 | Cappuccio et al., Sleep 2010. The association is U shaped, so too much scores like too little. |
| How regular is your sleep schedule? | Regular: +1.0 · Somewhat: 0 · Irregular: -2.0 | Windred et al., Sleep 2024, where regularity predicted mortality better than duration |
| How do you eat? | Western: -3.5 · Mixed: -1 · Mostly healthy: +1.5 · Optimal: +3.5 | Fadnes et al., PLoS Medicine 2022 |
| Any diagnosed conditions? | Type 2 diabetes: -6 · Cardiovascular disease: -6 · COPD: -7 · Hypertension: -4.4 · Cancer history: -4 · Depression: -4 | Emerging Risk Factors Collaboration, NEJM 2011; Chan et al., World Psychiatry 2025 |
| How long did your parents live? | Long lived: +2 · Average: 0 · Died early: -2 | Ruby et al., Genetics 2018, which found heritability of lifespan to be modest, so this is deliberately capped |
| How connected are you to others? | Strong: +1.5 · Average: 0 · Isolated: -3.7 | Holt-Lunstad et al., PLoS Medicine 2010 |
| How stressed are you, chronically? | Low: +0.5 · Moderate: 0 · Extreme: -2.5 | Chan et al., World Psychiatry 2025 |
| What is your work like? | Physically active: +0.5 · Desk: 0 · Shift work: -1.5 | Active work counts toward movement; shift work is scored against sleep, because it disrupts circadian rhythm |
| What is your highest education? | Tertiary: +1.5 · Secondary: 0 · Basic: -1.5 | Chetty et al., JAMA 2016. Kept moderate on purpose, because it overlaps with everything above. |
| Do you take supplements? | Any combination: 0 | Manson et al., NEJM 2019, the VITAL trial, found no mortality benefit for vitamin D or omega 3 |
Why the supplement question scores zero
It would have been easy to award a point for vitamin D. Users like being rewarded, and no reviewer would ever check. The VITAL trial randomised nearly 26,000 people to vitamin D, omega 3 or placebo and found no reduction in mortality. So the question is asked, the answer is recorded, and the app tells you on screen that it is worth nothing. A scoring sheet you can read is a scoring sheet that has to be honest about its own null results.
Why answering again is the point
You can retake the quiz as often as you like, and the app remembers your previous result and shows you the difference. That turns an abstract decision into an arithmetic one: this is what the research says the change you are considering is worth, for someone your age with your other answers.
Free result. Every factor links to its study inside the app.
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