My aunt sees that the current life expectancy is reported today as “77.6 years, with women outliving men by 5.3 years”.
She concluded that a woman’s life expectancy is 82.9 years.
Since she would be 83 this year she says that she no longer expects to see her birthday.
Obviously, the life expectancy for someone who is 82 is much higher now than at birth.
But what can I show her to prove that?
Try this Life Table from the Social Security Administration.
While the life expectancy for a female at birth is 79.3, the further life expectancy for a female who is already 83 is an additional 7.3 years, or over 90.
The probability of dying within one year at that age is only 7%, so you can tell her she has a probablity of 93% of seeing her next birthday.
Colibri -
By use of that table, since she is 82 now, her life expectancy is 89.
Bu then when she reaches 89, her life expectancy will become 94 (rounding to nearest year).
At 94 her life expectancy will become 97.
At 97 it becomes 100.
At 100 it becomes 102.
At 102 it becomes 104.
At 104 it becomes 106.
At 106 it becomes 108.
At 108 it becomes 109.
:
:
At 119 it becomes 120
And at 120 it goes to 50/50 she will see 121.
So, I think I’ll tell her that’s her life expectancy.
And by the time she’s 121 she can expect the numbers to improve even more!
Well, for starters, you can tell her that the figure she has takes into account ALL deaths. However, it’s unlikely that your aunt, at age 82, is likely to die of SIDS or any other childhood diseases. It’s also less likely that she will die engaged in skydiving or any of the other activities that usually claim the lives of younger people. By throwing those (and other similar cases out), the average gets skewed upwards.
Zev Steinhardt
:smack:
Of course, you can also tell her that that number (82.9) is just an average. By definition, some people have to exceed the average (unless everyone drops dead at exactly the same age). Simply advise her that she can be above average.
Zev Steinhardt
You got that right Zev. I would think that there have been a few women over 83 in the news recently.
I’m surprised by this figures, because last time checked, the life expectancy for people over 95 was significantly lower than that (granted, these statistics dates back to maybe 7-8 years, but I doubt it changed much, and they’re french stats, but I doubt the difference between both countries would be huge). I seem to remember that the life expectancy for a 99 yo man was less than one year (for some reason, the french bureau of statistics don’t release figures for people older than 99).
So, are you sure that your figures showing a 2 years life expectancy past 100 are accurate?
Forget about my previous question. I just noticed your figures came from an actuarial table.
No, according to that table the 50:50 point is reached at 108 for women and 106 for men. At 119 it goes to 5% (based on a sample size of zero!)
Where are you getting a sample size of zero? The table linked to earlier in the thread gives the number of survivors out of 100,000. If say there are 10 people in the US that are 108 that would be .003 in the number of lives column so I am not sure you can say the sample size is 0.
No, not exactly, as hibernicus pointed out the odds of dying within the next year reach 50% between 107 and 108. And the life expectancy drops to less than one additional year after 111.
As the old joke goes:
A 110-year-old man was being interviewed on his birthday by a reporter for the local paper. At the end of the interview, the reporter wished him good health, and said, “I hope to see you on your birthday next year.” The old man cackled, and said, “Don’t you have any doubt of that, sonny!” The reporter said, “I’m glad you have such confidence.” The old man replied, “I have no doubt at all. I’ve looked it up, and very very few people die between the ages of 110 and 111!”"
The probability of dying for extremely old people actually levels off and starts dropping, meaning, after a certain point, you become less likely to die. There was a fascinating Scientific American article that posited that the human life expectancy trends look similar to failure trends for redundant systems if we assume that we are born with significant number of components already failed.
On interesting observation from the table is we can now call it: middle age is at just short of 41 for women and just over 38 for men. That’s the age at which your life expectancy=your age (interestingly NOT the same as 1/2 the life expectancy at birth).
Before that you’re young, after that you’re old 
I noticed it too while searching for an equivalent table for France. I’ve been an old man for some months… 
On the other hand, I’m now officially allowed to rant about young people. Also, I expect that from now on, the youngsters will display proper respect when adressing me.
This would include not contradicting my statements, in particular in Great Debates 
.
So can expect all your future posts to begin with “In my day…”
Maybe I should quit, or start using a static line to make sure I don’t forget.