The real odds

The numbers behind the choices people make — and the numbers One Life rolls against.

16 articles · October 2026

One Life is built on a simple idea: choices change the odds, never the certainties. A life in the game is a long run of decisions, and every one of them is settled by odds drawn from what really happens to people.

These articles are about those odds. Each one takes a single question — how long do first marriages last, how many new businesses survive, what does smoking cost — and answers it with the best numbers we could find, from government statistics agencies, health authorities and peer-reviewed research. Each says where its numbers come from, what they do and do not mean, and what tends to move them. And each ends with how the same choice is played in the game.

You do not need to play One Life to read them. If you do play, they are the dice.

Money and work

What a degree is worth in payA full-time worker with a bachelor’s degree earns about 60% more a week than one with only a high school diploma, and is less likely to be out of work.How long people stay in a jobThe typical American worker has been with their current employer for about four years. Young workers move far more often; workers near retirement often stay for a decade or more.Will a new business last? The real oddsFour in five new businesses see their first birthday. Half see their fifth. About a third see their tenth.The $400 question: who could cover an emergencySix in ten American adults say they could pay an unexpected $400 bill with cash. The rest would borrow, sell something or not be able to pay.Buying a first home, later than everThe typical first-time home buyer in the US is now 40 years old, a record. First-time buyers made up just 21% of purchases, also a record.Who has retirement savings, and how muchJust over half of American households have a retirement account. Among those that do, the typical balance is far smaller than most people expect.

Love, family and friends

How long first marriages lastAbout half of first marriages in the US reach their twentieth anniversary. The odds are better than the old “half of all marriages end in divorce” line suggests, and they depend on when and how people marry.When people have their first childThe average American mother now has her first baby at 27.5, nearly a year later than in 2016. In cities it is 28.5.Friends, loneliness and a long lifeLoneliness raises the risk of dying early by about as much as smoking does — and the number of Americans with no close friends has quadrupled since 1990.Leaving the country you were born inAbout 281 million people live outside the country they were born in, roughly one person in thirty. The money they send home is larger than most countries’ economies.

Body and health

What smoking takes from a life, and what quitting gives backSmokers lose more than ten years of life on average. People who quit before forty get almost all of it back.What heavy drinking costs a lifeExcessive drinking kills about 178,000 Americans a year. The people who die from it lose, on average, 24 years of life.Moving your body, and the years it buysPeople who are not active enough have a 20–30% higher risk of dying than people who are. Nearly a third of adults worldwide fall short.Sleep: the third of adults who do not get enoughAbout one in three American adults regularly sleeps less than the seven hours a night that health experts recommend.

Luck and where you start

Where you are born: life expectancy in eight countriesA baby born in Japan today can expect to live about 85 years. A baby born in Nigeria, about 55. The single largest fact about a life is where it starts.The odds of going proAbout one high school basketball player in thirty plays in college. About one college player in a hundred makes the NBA or WNBA.

Every number on these pages is a number the game rolls against.

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