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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

#51

Post by SageRaven »

vijayr wrote: post #41
gojomo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may mean homicide rather than suicide: the US doesn't seem especially high in this ranking of suicide deaths -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra... -- below many other rich or large countries, and not far from culturally/developmentally similar countries (like Canada/NZ/UK). The US does stick out among its usual developmental peers on the homicide rates -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

That wikipedia link is interesting - almost in every single country, male suicides are much higher than female suicides, in some cases 4 to 5 times more.

I'd hazard a guess it's due to two things, each not necessarily independent. First, males in many countries are prone to societal "honor" and may kill themselves in times of great shame (poor Indian farmers loosing everything to shady Monsanto salesmen and then drinking pesticide). And second, women are often mothers, and while a suicidal man tends to not "think of the children" women (being mothers and all) do consider the fates of their children, and likely forestall killing themselves out of compassion/concern for their offspring.

Given the shit the world generally dumps on women, I'd say the female gender is simply built of sterner emotional stuff than their male counterparts.

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

#52

Post by danielweber »

yesbabyyes wrote: post #10

A very interesting post indeed. Another common mistake many people seem to make is when comparing historical life expectancies. Most of our progress in prolonging human life is due to minimizing the infant mortality rate. This means that people who survived infancy and childhood could make it to an old age even in historical times.

It's also inappropriate to compare "infant mortality" across countries. A 490-gram baby that is born with trouble breathing and dies in 2 hours will count as a stillbirth in some countries and an infant mortality in others.

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

#53

Post by grecy »

tptacek wrote: post #38
grecy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't there a lot of states where back seat passengers don't have to wear seat belts, and people can ride in the back of pick-ups etc. Obviously road and car quality are up for debate, but once you spend some time driving around Europe in European cars, you'll see what I mean.

For every 1 passenger killed in the US, almost 3 drivers are killed. Given that the mean occupancy per car in the US is something between 1.3 and 1.7, it seems very unlikely that back seat restraints are a significant contributor to these statistics.

It's exactly that kind of thinking that explains why road deaths in the US are high (the original topic of this thread).

Whenever a stat says something interesting that could be improved about America, it seems Americans find a way of dismissing the data as "not really appropriate for reasons x,y,z", thus leaving the original problem unimproved.

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

#54

Post by jerf »

Retric wrote: post #43
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there data to back up your argument? What you're saying seems to amount to this: If you're wealthy, the US health care system is so good that not only does it outdo Europe's system at handling heart disease and cancer, but it does so much better than Europe's that the effect is evident from mortality statistics even though 75MM people in the US make less than $22,000/yr. At the same time, you're saying that regard…

Your assuming at the lower end of the scale are accurately diagnosed. However, for a simple idea of how bad the US healthcare system really is look at this: http://www.cddep.org/tools/methicillin_resistant_staphylococ...

No, he's not assuming anything like that. He's observing that if the US is slightly worse on average (for the sake of argument), but you have what you claim are a large number of people being actively harmed by the system, then to make up for it you must have a large number of being receiving unbelievably good outcomes, or you can't end up with "slightly worse on average" in the end. It's a very simple mathematical point.

I'd observe that in general, the complaint with the US medical system is that it is too expensive, or that for what we pour into it it ought to be clearly the best everywhere across all measures instead of merely near the top. (Which is rather more accurate; it isn't "slightly below average", it's "slightly behind best", and there are rather a lot of individual measures in which it is the best.) It isn't that it's a terrible system in general. You have to game stats pretty hard to make it an actively bad system in terms of raw outcome.

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

#55

Post by danielweber »

refurb wrote: post #17
yesbabyyes wrote: post #10

A very interesting post indeed. Another common mistake many people seem to make is when comparing historical life expectancies. Most of our progress in prolonging human life is due to minimizing the infant mortality rate. This means that people who survived infancy and childhood could make it to an old age even in historical times.

This is true and a huge annoyance to me when people say "When social security was first put in place, most people didn't live to collect it!" This is of course false. Back in the early 1900's when life expectancy was only around 60, if you survived your childhood, you'd likely live to 70 or 80.

Back in the early 1900's when life expectancy was only around 60, if you survived your childhood, you'd likely live to 70 or 80.

This didn't seem right so I checked. A 20 year old in 1900 could expect to live to 62. In 1939 (4 years after SS was first put in place) a 20 year old would live to 67.

Interpretted as a median age of death, you are right that more than 50% of 20 year-olds collected at least 1 check, but a significant fraction died before retirement age, and they generally didn't say in retirement for decades.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html I used white males, and women lived longer but non-whites lived shorter.

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

#56

Post by danielweber »

jerf wrote: post #54
Retric wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assuming at the lower end of the scale are accurately diagnosed. However, for a simple idea of how bad the US healthcare system really is look at this: http://www.cddep.org/tools/methicillin_resistant_staphylococ...

No, he's not assuming anything like that. He's observing that if the US is slightly worse on average (for the sake of argument), but you have what you claim are a large number of people being actively harmed by the system, then to make up for it you must have a large number of being receiving unbelievably good outcomes, or you can't end up with "slightly worse on average" in the end. It's a very simple mathematical p…

Simpson's Paradox says you can have rich people country A outperform rich people in country B and poor people in country A outperform poor people in country B and have country B outperform country A when both groups are put together.

This is probably not the case, but since this is hacker news I'm being a dork about the math.

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

#57

Post by csense »

I don't like using averages because they can be misleading. A triplet of the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles is more descriptive. Of course, the most complete picture is looking at the whole distribution.

I'd like to see a plot of the distribution of lifetime as a function of birth year. I.e. a 3D plot with current age on the X axis, age of death on the Z axis, and probability on the Y axis. (Where, as in Minecraft, X is east/west, Z is south/north.)

Cut off the portion representing people who have died already (Z < now-X), renormalize each cohort so its Y values add up to 1, and you'll get the distribution of lifetimes for people who are alive today. (I.e. a conditional distribution, conditioned on being alive today.) Which at least one other poster was asking about.

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

#58

Post by tptacek »

grecy wrote: post #53
tptacek wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every 1 passenger killed in the US, almost 3 drivers are killed. Given that the mean occupancy per car in the US is something between 1.3 and 1.7, it seems very unlikely that back seat restraints are a significant contributor to these statistics.

It's exactly that kind of thinking that explains why road deaths in the US are high (the original topic of this thread). Whenever a stat says something interesting that could be improved about America, it seems Americans find a way of dismissing the data as "not really appropriate for reasons x,y,z", thus leaving the original problem unimproved.

I'm sorry, 'grecy, I've been dismissive of you in this thread, but I simply don't understand what you're trying to say here. It is evident from the statistics that lack of mandatory rear passenger seat belts are probably not a significant cause of death in the US.

If you're just trying to make a case that we should mandate rear passenger seatbelts, I'm not arguing with you. I'm talking about life expectancy stats.

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

#59

Post by hack_edu »

SageRaven wrote: post #51
vijayr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wikipedia link is interesting - almost in every single country, male suicides are much higher than female suicides, in some cases 4 to 5 times more.

I'd hazard a guess it's due to two things, each not necessarily independent. First, males in many countries are prone to societal "honor" and may kill themselves in times of great shame (poor Indian farmers loosing everything to shady Monsanto salesmen and then drinking pesticide). And second, women are often mothers, and while a suicidal man tends to not "think of the children" women (being mothers and all) do consi…

Plain and simple, across and countries and all historical periods, males act more dangerously. They put themselves in physically dangerous situations more often than women, and die in mid-life at a much higher rate. Male children are more likely to live until adolescence, but after their 20s their portion of the population falls back in line with that of females.

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

#60

Post by fghh45sdfhr3 »

brd wrote: post #50
vijayr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wikipedia link is interesting - almost in every single country, male suicides are much higher than female suicides, in some cases 4 to 5 times more.

Actually, female attempt rates are higher than male. There are a variety of factors that come into play but essentially females choose methods of suicide that are less effective so male rates ultimately end up higher.

I have heard it described as an attempt to get help versus actual deadly intent.
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