| 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. |