Time left with parents calculator
Two weeks a year at home in Pune comes to 196 days with a mother of 68. Put in your own numbers.
Your mother, 68
196 days
That is about 6 months, spread across about 14 visits. WHO’s 2023 tables give a woman of 68 in India 14 more years on average.
One more trip a year takes it to 391 days with her.
Your father, 72
137 days
That is about 5 months, spread across about 10 visits. WHO’s 2023 tables give a man of 72 in India 10 more years on average.
One more trip a year takes it to 274 days with him.
These are averages for the country your parents live in, from WHO’s 2023 life tables. Your parents are not averages. Use the number to plan the next visit. It predicts nothing.
How the number is worked out
1/ Years left, by country
The World Health Organization publishes, for every country, how many years a person of a given age has left on average. A woman of 70 in India has 12.5. In the United Kingdom she has 16.6. In the UAE, 16.2.
2/ Your parent’s age
The tables run in five-year steps from 40 to 85. An age between two steps is read off a straight line between them. Past 85 the line keeps falling and stops at one year.
3/ Days together
Those years are multiplied by the days you spend in the same house each year: trips times days, never more than 365. That is the number.
What the number is for
Tim Urban did this sum for his own parents in December 2015, in a post called The Tail End. He was 34. His finding: “when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time.”
He grew up in the same country as his parents. Most of the families I write for did not. A child in the same city who visits every Sunday gets 52 days a year. A child in Dubai or Toronto who flies home for two weeks gets 14.
The calculator does not make that number bigger. The visit can hold more. Use one evening of the next trip to ask a question nobody in the family has asked. The life story question generator gives you ten to start with, and the 100 questions to ask your parents run in the order that gets a parent talking.
If you want the answers kept, in their words, with the photographs, that is the gift book. Ten stories, ten hardback copies, four months. I write it.
The number of visits goes down by one each time you fly home. What they tell you on those visits can stay.
Questions people ask
How do I work out how much time I have left with my parents?
Take the years your parent has left on average, from a life table for their country, their age and their sex. Multiply by the days you spend together each year. A mother of 68 in India has about 14 years on WHO’s 2023 tables. At one visit of 14 days a year, that is 196 days.
Where does the data come from?
The World Health Organization’s Global Health Observatory, life tables for 2023, indicator “ex”, the years of life remaining at a given age. It is published by country and by sex. The calculator carries the tables for 31 countries, chosen for where Indian and South Asian families live.
My parents’ country is not on the list. What do I pick?
Pick the closest neighbour. Countries in one region sit close together: at 70, a woman in Kenya has 11.8 years left on average, in Uganda 11.6, in Tanzania 11.4.
Is this a prediction of how long my parents will live?
No. It is an average for millions of people of the same age, sex and country. Health, money, where they live and luck move any one person a long way from it, in both directions. Read it as a reason to plan, never as a forecast.
Why are my mother’s and father’s numbers different?
Women live longer. In 29 of the 31 countries here, a woman of 70 has more years left than a man of 70. In India she has 12.5 and he has 11. Bahrain and Qatar are the two exceptions.
Do the days they spend with me count?
Yes. Count every day you are under the same roof, at their home or yours. If they spend three months a year with you, put 1 time a year and 90 days.
Is anything I type saved?
No. The sum runs in your browser. The ages you type are not sent anywhere and are gone when you close the page.