A simulation study of the impact of population-wide lifestyle modifications on life expectancy in the Chinese population

Qiufen Sun, Liyun Zhao, Yuxiang Yang, Yinqi Ding, Canqing Yu, Dianjianyi Sun, Yuanjie Pang, Pei Pei, Ling Yang, Yiping Chen, Huaidong Du, Ranran Du, Maxim Barnard, Junshi Chen, Zhengming Chen, Dongmei Yu (), Liming Li () and Jun Lv ()
Additional contact information
Qiufen Sun: Peking University
Liyun Zhao: Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Yuxiang Yang: Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Yinqi Ding: Peking University
Canqing Yu: Peking University
Dianjianyi Sun: Peking University
Yuanjie Pang: Peking University
Pei Pei: Peking University Center for Public Health and Epidemic Preparedness & Response
Ling Yang: University of Oxford
Yiping Chen: University of Oxford
Huaidong Du: University of Oxford
Ranran Du: Qingdao Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Maxim Barnard: University of Oxford
Junshi Chen: China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment
Zhengming Chen: University of Oxford
Dongmei Yu: Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Liming Li: Peking University
Jun Lv: Peking University

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract It is uncertain how much life expectancy of the Chinese population would improve under current and greater policy targets on lifestyle-based risk factors for chronic diseases and mortality. Here we report a simulation of how improvements in four risk factors, namely smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and diet, could affect mortality. We show that in the ideal scenario, that is, all people who currently smoke quit smoking, excessive alcohol use was reduced to moderate intake, people under 65 increased moderate physical activity by one hour and those aged 65 and older increased by half an hour per day, and all participants ate 200 g more fresh fruits and 50 g more fish/seafood per day, life expectancy at age 30 would increase by 4.83 and 5.39 years for men and women, respectively. In a more moderate risk reduction scenario referred to as the practical scenario, where improvements in each lifestyle factor were approximately halved, the gains in life expectancy at age 30 could be half those of the ideal scenario. However, the possibility to realize these estimates in practise may be influenced by population-wide adherence to lifestyle recommendations.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-64824-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-64824-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-64824-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().