Living: How Long Will You Live?

The following life-expectancy quiz is one of many health questionnaires now used by doctors, medical centers and insurance groups.

While quizzes can hardly be precise, they do give a more realistic picture of probable longevity than old-fashioned actuarial tables, which relied almost exclusively on the subject's heredity patterns and medical history. Current computations try to measure risk in relation to environment, stress and general behavior, though statisticians and experts do not always agree on how to weigh the components. A high salary may not be as detrimental to longevity—because of competitive stress—as many quizzes suggest. On the other hand, marriage or...