According to Ron Gebhardtsbauer, an actuary at Penn State University's Smeal College of Business and former senior pension fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries, a 54-year-old woman's average life expectancy in 2009 is 86.2 years.

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Trevor Little, a professor at the North Carolina State University college of textiles, reckons that the domestically-made share of the American clothing business will fall to about 25%, but stabilise there for the foreseeable future.

ECONOMIST: American textiles