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"Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

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Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#21

Post by tokenadult »

Just last week there was another Hacker News post that prompted me to look up some of the articles by demographer James W. Vaupel, one of the leading scholars on the demography of aging and how to adjust for time trends in life expectancy. His article

"Biodemography of human ageing" Nature. 2010 Mar 25;464(7288):536-42. doi:10.1038/nature08984

http://www.demographic-challenge.com/files/downloads/2eb51e2...

covers most of the essential issues. His striking finding is "Humans are living longer than ever before. In fact, newborn children in high-income countries can expect to live to more than 100 years. Starting in the mid-1800s, human longevity has increased dramatically and life expectancy is increasing by an average of six hours a day."

http://www.prb.org/Journalists/Webcasts/2010/humanlongevity....

Meanwhile, a person at any given age can look up period life tables for what the blog post author of the post submitted here correctly describes as a MINIMUM life expectancy at that person's current age.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

(The links shown are for United States data, but data like these are available for most developed countries.)

It is also possible to find life expectancy formulas adjusted for personal health status and lifestyle.

http://www.msrs.state.mn.us/info/Age_Cal.htmls

(Minnesota data)

http://www.bupa.com.au/health-and-wellness/tools-and-apps/to...

(Australia data)

The link posted last week

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w...

gives good data on trends in causes of death from 1960 to the present in the United States and in OECD countries as a whole. It showed that life expectancy at birth, at age 40, at age 60, at age 65, and at age 80 have all increased during the years shown on the chart.

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#22

Post by Tuna-Fish »

tptacek wrote: post #9
tesseractive wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't studied the data, but I would be surprised if motor vehicle deaths were "anomalously" high. My hypothesis would be that it is an entirely expected outcome given the comparative lack of public transportation in this country relative to other industrialized nations such as Japan and those in Europe. More driving miles (or, perhaps, more hours spent driving) per capita should lead to more motor vehicle acciden…

It's easier to maintain a dense public transportation system when the system's goals are (for instance) to move 80MM people around in an area the size of Colorado. Colorado, by comparison, has a population of 5MM. But yes, I was making the latter point. Does life expectancy tell us something about the differences between life in the United States and Finland? Yes... but what if all it's telling us is "the United Stat…

You picked an interesting comparison -- Finland is one of the rare European countries that is actually less dense than the US. The population density of the whole of US is ~34/km², while Finland clocks in only 16/km². Even when you account for the fact that the northernmost third of Finland is essentially unpopulated, Finnish population density is still well under the American one. (And I quess you guys have the Rockies, Alaska and a few deserts too...)

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#23

Post by grecy »

tesseractive wrote: post #8
tptacek wrote: post #4

This is a great post. Because I'm a nerd, I'm compelled to make an orthogonal point: Life expectancy is not entirely medical and is not a particularly good way to compare countries. Consider that among the top causes of death in the US are "accidents" (predominantly motor vehicles) and suicide, both of which are anomalously high in the US. Consider also that if you go to the top US cause of death (heart disease, clea…

I haven't studied the data, but I would be surprised if motor vehicle deaths were "anomalously" high. My hypothesis would be that it is an entirely expected outcome given the comparative lack of public transportation in this country relative to other industrialized nations such as Japan and those in Europe. More driving miles (or, perhaps, more hours spent driving) per capita should lead to more motor vehicle acciden…

Some other factors to think about:

Road quality in the United states is low compared to other OPEC countries

Seatbelts and motorbike helmets are still not mandatory in all US states

Car quality and safety in the United States is lower than other OPEC countries

EDIT: I meant OECD, not OPEC.

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#24

Post by grecy »

When looking at these numbers, and thinking how the official retirement age in most countries has been raised to 67 or 69, does anyone else feel like old Boxer from Animal Farm [1] ?

They keep dangling that retirement carrot in front of us, but by the time we get to enjoy it, we're dead.

[1]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_(Animal_Farm)

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#25

Post by tptacek »

grecy wrote: post #23
tesseractive wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't studied the data, but I would be surprised if motor vehicle deaths were "anomalously" high. My hypothesis would be that it is an entirely expected outcome given the comparative lack of public transportation in this country relative to other industrialized nations such as Japan and those in Europe. More driving miles (or, perhaps, more hours spent driving) per capita should lead to more motor vehicle acciden…

Some other factors to think about: Road quality in the United states is low compared to other OPEC countries Seatbelts and motorbike helmets are still not mandatory in all US states Car quality and safety in the United States is lower than other OPEC countries EDIT: I meant OECD, not OPEC.

In only one state in the US are seatbelts not mandatory for adults (New Hampshire). Otherwise, the only differences are between states in which you can be pulled over for being observed not wearing a seatbelt (the "primary enforcement" states) and those in which you can only be issued a seatbelt ticket after being pulled over for some other reason.

I also think the road and car quality questions are up for debate.

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#26

Post by tptacek »

barrkel wrote: post #19
tptacek wrote: post #4

This is a great post. Because I'm a nerd, I'm compelled to make an orthogonal point: Life expectancy is not entirely medical and is not a particularly good way to compare countries. Consider that among the top causes of death in the US are "accidents" (predominantly motor vehicles) and suicide, both of which are anomalously high in the US. Consider also that if you go to the top US cause of death (heart disease, clea…

You'll tend to see similar effects for other medical issues, particularly cancer, in which the US notoriously outperforms many of the European countries that outrank it on life expectancy. FWIW, I looked into this using the tables on http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/all-cancer... - not just the all cancers table, but also the separate tables for different types of cancer. The implication of what you…

The United States ranks #56 (higher numbers are better), ahead of basically the entire EU, on colorectal cancer mortality.

The United States ranks #41, ahead of much of the EU but behind Germany and France, on ovarian cancer.

The United States ranks #61, again ahead of almost all of the EU, on breast cancer.

Here I might point out that to come in much higher than the US in these numbers, ie, to be Gabon, you have to have a lot of people dying before they can get cancer. Moving on:

The United States ranks #27 on leukemia, besting France, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

The United States is #170 on stomach cancer, ahead of all of Europe.

The United States does worse than Europe on lung cancer, and is right in the middle of the pack on skin cancer. Other than that, the narrative is pretty clear.

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#27

Post by tptacek »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #22
tptacek wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to maintain a dense public transportation system when the system's goals are (for instance) to move 80MM people around in an area the size of Colorado. Colorado, by comparison, has a population of 5MM. But yes, I was making the latter point. Does life expectancy tell us something about the differences between life in the United States and Finland? Yes... but what if all it's telling us is "the United Stat…

You picked an interesting comparison -- Finland is one of the rare European countries that is actually less dense than the US. The population density of the whole of US is ~34/km², while Finland clocks in only 16/km². Even when you account for the fact that the northernmost third of Finland is essentially unpopulated, Finnish population density is still well under the American one. (And I quess you guys have the Rock…

I picked Finland out of a hat, but the numbers I used were for Germany.

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#28

Post by baltcode »

grecy wrote: post #23
tesseractive wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't studied the data, but I would be surprised if motor vehicle deaths were "anomalously" high. My hypothesis would be that it is an entirely expected outcome given the comparative lack of public transportation in this country relative to other industrialized nations such as Japan and those in Europe. More driving miles (or, perhaps, more hours spent driving) per capita should lead to more motor vehicle acciden…

Some other factors to think about: Road quality in the United states is low compared to other OPEC countries Seatbelts and motorbike helmets are still not mandatory in all US states Car quality and safety in the United States is lower than other OPEC countries EDIT: I meant OECD, not OPEC.

I thought OPEC was the oil producers club, and that the US isn't a member. Did I miss something?

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#29

Post by Retric »

tptacek wrote: post #13
kiba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my stats memorized. Accidents are at the very least in the top ten cause of death every year. Every year, around 100K people die in accidents, of which 40K were car accidents. However, that is dwarfed by 600K people dying of heart disease and 570K people dying of cancer every year.

Not sure how we get to the word "dwarfed" in that analysis, since despite ranking below Europe on life expectancy, the US does significantly better on heart disease and cancer mortality. Point being: something's going on here that confounds life expectancy comparisons.

Your statistics are simply wrong. Which is why they numbers don't seem to add up correctly. US has a mixed heath-care system with some people reviving enough treatment that it actually lowers there chances of survival and others getting little to no treatment.

PS: It's hard to get good data. Japan has twice the US suicide rate and a longer life expectancy. However, some of their numbers are off due to people not reporting deaths so they can continue to collect pension benefits.

Re: "Life Expectancy" Doesn't Measure How Long You're Expected To Live

#30

Post by joshuahedlund »

kiba wrote: post #12
yummyfajitas wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slight nitpick - accidents are not a top cause of death in the US, they are merely a top cause of early death. But this has a disproportionate effect on low life expectancy, because early death has a disproportionate effect on life expectancy stats. 1 person dying at age 20 (instead of 80) has the same effect on life expectancy as 60 people dying at age 79 (instead of 80).

I have my stats memorized. Accidents are at the very least in the top ten cause of death every year. Every year, around 100K people die in accidents, of which 40K were car accidents. However, that is dwarfed by 600K people dying of heart disease and 570K people dying of cancer every year.

> Every year, around 100K people die in accidents, of which 40K were car accidents.

I don't know about overall accidents, and I don't have numbers memorized, but I know that vehicle accident deaths have dropped pretty significantly over the last couple of decades. Trends are relevant, too.

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