Best way to Calculate Human Age from a Birthdate

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Best way to Calculate Human Age from a Birthdate

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Sean Lange

Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2013 3:07 PM

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Actually I think that a negative age has some real value if you think of age not as only the age of a person. What you are calculating is the total years elapsed between two dates and if you were looking at something like project delivery dates a negative data might have some real worth. Maybe a company that works with long term deliverables like construction. It might be nice to see that something was delivered more than a year ahead of schedule. Your fine code would work for such a scenario if it included negatives.

We have now seen several different approaches to the same problem. Most of them handle leap years correctly too. BigGrin

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Post #1404459

Michael Valentine Jones

Posted Tuesday, January 08, 2013 3:34 PM

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Sean Lange (1/8/2013)

Going by the dictionary definition of age, "The length of time during which a being or thing has existed.", I have to say that negative age does not make much sense to me.

I tested the solutions from the other posts using the test data I posted (leaving out the negative ages), and found every one had at least one difference with the solution I posted, especially with the handling of Feb 29 birthdays, or when the time of day for CURR_DATE was before the time of day for DOB when they were both the same day of the year ( Example: DOB = 2013-01-08 16:52:54.810 and CURR_DATE = 2023-01-08 16:52:54.710 ). I believe most calculations of Age ignore time of day, so my solution is coded to ignore it.

Post #1404472

Sean Lange

Posted Wednesday, January 09, 2013 7:22 AM

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Going by the dictionary definition of age, "The length of time during which a being or thing has existed.", I have to say that negative age does not make much sense to me.

I agree that as age negative doesn't make any sense. I was trying to point out the calculation could be used in other scenarios where a negative would make sense. Given that the thread is to calculate human age it certainly doesn't make any sense in that context.

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Post #1404776

Jeff Moden

Posted Wednesday, January 09, 2013 8:03 AM

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AndrewSQLDBA (1/8/2013)

Hello Everyone
Happy New Year!!!

I am fooling around with some code, and was wondering if there is a really great function to calculate the birthdate of a person. One that will take into count things like leap year. I am not getting into such fine details such as if the person was born on the west coast or the east coast type of calculations. Just a very good birthdate age calculation function.

If I pass in the birthdate, what is the persons age today. Most that I have used or tried, come up a bit short when it comes to returning a perfect calculation

Thanks in Advance
Andrew SQLDBA

So, which "standard" are you going to use for someone that is born on a leap year day? Feb 28th or Mar 1st? Wink

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Post #1404809

Michael Valentine Jones

Posted Wednesday, January 09, 2013 9:05 AM

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Jeff Moden (1/9/2013)

AndrewSQLDBA (1/8/2013)

So, which "standard" are you going to use for someone that is born on a leap year day? Feb 28th or Mar 1st? Wink

As usual, no one agrees on this, but different countries do at least have some standard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_29
"...in England and Wales or in Hong Kong, a person born on February 29, 1996, will have legally reached 18 years old on March 1, 2014. If he or she was born in the United States, Taiwan or New Zealand, he or she legally becomes 18 on February 28, 2014, a day earlier..."

I prefer the Feb 28 date for birthdays in non-leap years because that's the "standard" for the US. And, it's easier to code in TSQL. BigGrin

Post #1404853

math martinez

Posted Wednesday, January 09, 2013 11:40 PM

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Simple way to compute your age accurately.

A lot of query not exactly compute the age? yes! because sometime they only compute the datediff between DOB and datenow and divide it to 365.25 days and as a result they get a number with decimal something like 25 is the age with .06 decimal (age=25.06).

In this query you exactly get the age as is it.
Example 1
DOB = 11/15/1987 and
datenow =11/15/2012 the result would be
AGE=25

Example 2
DOB = 11/16/1987 and
datenow =11/15/2012 the result would be
AGE=24

SO HERE ARE THE QUERY

DECLARE @DOB SMALLDATETIME
SELECT @DOB = '11/15/1987'

SELECT
CASE
WHEN MONTH(@DOB) >= MONTH(GETDATE()) AND DAY(@DOB) >=DAY(GETDATE()) THEN DATEDIFF(YY,@DOB,GETDATE())
ELSE DATEDIFF(YY,@DOB,GETDATE())-1

END AS AGE

HOPE I CAN HELP!

Post #1405204

Lynn Pettis

Posted Thursday, January 10, 2013 12:28 AM

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How about these solutions?


declare @DOB date = '20080229',
        @CurDate date = '20130228';

select
    @DOB as DateOfBirth,
    @CurDate as CurrentDate,
    datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate) - case when dateadd(yy, -datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate), @CurDate) < @DOB
                                        then 1
                                        else 0
                                   end as TurnsYearOlderFirstOfMarch,
    datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate) - case when dateadd(yy, datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate), @DOB) <= @CurDate
                                        then 0
                                        else 1
                                   end as TurnsYearOlderLastOfFebruary;

set @CurDate = '20130301';

select
    @DOB as DateOfBirth,
    @CurDate as CurrentDate,
    datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate) - case when dateadd(yy, -datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate), @CurDate) < @DOB
                                        then 1
                                        else 0
                                   end as TurnsYearOlderFirstOfMarch,
    datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate) - case when dateadd(yy, datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate), @DOB) <= @CurDate
                                        then 0
                                        else 1
                                   end as TurnsYearOlderLastOfFebruary;

set @CurDate = '20130227';

select
    @DOB as DateOfBirth,
    @CurDate as CurrentDate,
    datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate) - case when dateadd(yy, -datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate), @CurDate) < @DOB
                                        then 1
                                        else 0
                                   end as TurnsYearOlderFirstOfMarch,
    datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate) - case when dateadd(yy, datediff(yy, @DOB, @CurDate), @DOB) <= @CurDate
                                        then 0
                                        else 1
                                   end as TurnsYearOlderLastOfFebruary;

Lynn Pettis

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Post #1405233

mdsharif532

Posted Thursday, January 10, 2013 8:25 AM

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How about this..............

DECLARE @BIRTH_DATE DATETIME, @STPR_START_DATE DATETIME
SET @BIRTH_DATE = '2008-02-29'
SET @STPR_START_DATE = '2013-02-28'

SELECT CASE WHEN YEAR(@STPR_START_DATE)%400 != 0 AND DAY(@STPR_START_DATE)= 28 THEN

DATEDIFF(YEAR, @BIRTH_DATE, @STPR_START_DATE) - CASE WHEN MONTH(@BIRTH_DATE)*100 + (DAY(@BIRTH_DATE) -1) > MONTH(@STPR_START_DATE)*100 + DAY(@STPR_START_DATE) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

ELSE

DATEDIFF(YEAR, @BIRTH_DATE, @STPR_START_DATE) - CASE WHEN MONTH(@BIRTH_DATE)*100 + DAY(@BIRTH_DATE) > MONTH(@STPR_START_DATE)*100 + DAY(@STPR_START_DATE) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END

END AS AGE

Post #1405491

Nadrek

Posted Thursday, January 10, 2013 11:47 AM

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Michael Valentine Jones (1/9/2013)

Jeff Moden (1/9/2013)

So, which "standard" are you going to use for someone that is born on a leap year day? Feb 28th or Mar 1st? Wink

I hate to say it, but there is not actually a "standard" the U.S. - it depends on the precise purpose you're doing the date calculations for, and who needs them. Check with the business users about this, every time, particularly in regulated industries for for regulated/legal purposes.

Post #1405580

Lynn Pettis

Posted Thursday, January 10, 2013 7:04 PM

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mdsharif532 (1/10/2013)

A lot of extra work for what can be done easily with a couple of datetime functions and a case statement.

Cool

Lynn Pettis

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Post #1405721

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