Since I am asking for speculation I believe this question belongs here.
From my own anecdotal evidence, all things being equal, people whose parents live a long life tend to also live a long life, and the converse also seems somewhat true. (Of course, if they are drug addicts, alcoholics or have made other bad lifestyle decisions all bets are off.)
This tells me that genetics plays some kind of role in how long we live, or whether we succumb to diseases that kill us off earlier than normal. BTW, for the US, at least according to one website, the average lifespan for a male is 76 years while the average lifespan for a female is 82 years.
Given the amount of genetic understanding we now have I’m wondering how long it will be before experts can look at your genetic makeup, along with your medical history and the medical history of your close relatives, and determine if A) you will live shorter than the average expected lifespan, B) about as long as the average expected lifespan, or C) longer than the average expected lifespan. Or this is will always be impossible because there are too many variables besides genetics that would factor into it.
Right now there is no real way to determine this, so many people scrimp and save in their old age in fear of outliving their money. If they somehow knew there was an 80% chance they wouldn’t live until the average age they could enjoy their old age more and not worry about money so much. What say you?
I think that it’s hard to tease out the “all things being equal” part of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if, yes, there is a genetic factor to longevity. But, it’s also really important to bear in mind that people whose parents were wealthy also tend to be wealthy, and people whose parents were poor also tend to be poor – and that relative wealth, and its impact on nutrition, education, and environmental risks, might well play an even bigger part in longevity than your DNA.
my mom and grandfather each died of colon cancer at 69 and 73 respectively. I get colonoscopies every 2 years and don’t expect that part of my genetics to be as influential for me as it was for them.
While I think genetics is a strong component, I don’t think it can ever be fully predictive. Anecdotally, I give you the case of my stepfather:
His father died in his mid-forties of a stroke (causing him to drop out of college and start his life as a farmer, but that’s a different story).
His older brother died of a stroke in his early fifties.
His nephew died of a stroke in his early forties.
He died in his early nineties of natural causes (dementia in his last couple of years followed by a general decline culminating in dying in his sleep at 92)
That sounds like it might actually be an expected genetic outcome. I think this is due to dominant and recessive genes. Depending on which combination someone had, the outcome could be different. So maybe the three who died early had one combination and your step-father had another. I think that’s the same reason that siblings can have different eye colors. Depending on the genes they inherit, they may end up with blue or brown eyes. I’m not sure if all health conditions are like this, but it might explain how some family members die early while others live a long life.
There are various life span predictors (for example). Most of them predict that I will die around 83 (I am currently almost 64).
Both my parents are still alive at age 90. My father’s parents both died at 83, my mother’s mother died at 78 and my mother’s father at 56. I exercise regularly, and smoke cigars and drink more than the recommendation. Our financial guy ran a new simulation tool that calculates average ROI based on every year since (I believe) 1900, and said we have a 95+% chance of being able to live to 90, spend as much as we do now, and not run out. That’s good enough for me. I don’t particularly want to outlive my health, my wife, my money, or my mind.
This is a non sequitur. There are many things you get from your parents that have nothing to do with genetics, e.g. their education, habits, food choices, etc.
Actually there is a way to estimate your life expectancy based on certain epigenetic markers, but as far as I know such a test is not yet commercially available.
My parents were 59 and 69 when they died but I don’t think that has much predictive power in regards to how long my brother and I will live. Dad had COPD after a couple decades working with chemicals, then developed heart issues due to that. Mom had multiple autoimmune disorders that made it difficult to fight off an antibiotic resistant pneumonia that was a complication of first having had influenza A.
Little bro has one of the autoimmune disorders but the least serious of them and that I’m aware of I didn’t inherit any of them. We are both much healthier than our parents were at our ages, and as long as something unrelated to genetics doesn’t get us, I think it’s realistic to believe we’ll see our 80s.
A study came out years ago which found that 4 factors play a role in your chances of living to age 85 when you are 75 (something like that).
The 4 factors were smoking, eating fruit, exercise and alcohol consumption levels.
However smoking was a bigger risk factor than the other 3 combined. I think smoking alone was around 57% of the difference (again, rough estimates as I can’t find the study).
So there are factors in life expectancy but they aren’t always equal. Some are more important than others.
Right, and you’ll notice few of those personalized LE calculators ask you about parents’ age at death. More often they’ll ask about parents’ or siblings’ death from heart disease or cancer or having heart disease before a particular age. But mainly they ask you directly about your own health and lifestyle stuff much of which tends to be a reflection of your (socioeconomic class besides particular parents) background, so in that respect is ‘from your parents’ but isn’t genetic.
You are correct. dolphinboy was not warranted in reaching that conclusion just based off the phenomena he was considering (insufficient to rule out a number of other correlating factors).
I talked to a guy who does research in geriatrics, so no, no cite that I can point to.
He said that genetics for longevity kicks in at around 80. If you reach that age, have grandparents who lived 80+ years and is reasonably healthy, there’s a good chance you’ll get ten or even 20 more quality years.
It seems to bear out in my family:
Mother’s mom lived to 95
Mother’s dad died in a traffic accident @64 but his brother reached 89.
Father’s mom lived to 91
Father’s dad to 87 (-ish)
Mom is quite fit closing in at 83, takes no medication, drives her little hatchback everywhere and contemplates a vacation to Greece or Turkey this spring. She goes off by herself, because none of her friends are up to traveling.
Dad died a little after his 71st, but he was a two pack a day guy for almost 60 years. His siblings that haven’t smoked are alive, his siblings that smoked died from lung cancer in their late 60’s or early 70’s.
But a question occurs: Is firearm possession a LE factor? Are correlations known between gun ownership and expected lifespan? Googling, I see reports of firearm deaths reducing US life expectancy, but nothing about ownership except vague claims of no difference between owners and non-owners. Is any hard data available?
No, I don’t want a firearms debate. I’m just curious about data.
Even if we had perfect genetic information, you’re still only going to get a probability distribution, and a fairly wide one at that. Genetics will tell you you have a weak heart, but it can’t tell you which second it’s going to stop beating. Genetics will tell you that you’re more susceptible to complications from the flu, but it can’t tell you which year there will be a bad strain. And there are unlikely to be genetic markers for getting hit by a bus.
The solution to not worrying about money given an uncertain lifetime is an annuity. Unfortunately, people are psychologically disposed to thunk annuities are unfair. Which sort of makes sense. An annuity is like insurance against a good thing (a long life), so imagining dying early makes an annuity feel like you’re doubling your losses.
Also as I mentioned the personalized calculators often or usually ask some question like ‘did a parent (etc) have heart disease before 55’ or ‘X type of relative die of cancer’. So even if ‘genetics matter’ say 1/4, that doesn’t mean the age of death of parent matters that much, but rather all aspects of genetics put together. In web discussions of this (common on retirement oriented financial forums) it seems many people not only assume genetics is a much bigger factor than 1/4, but they also assume the age of death of close relatives is how to measure ‘the impact of genetics’. I’m guessing age of death of parents (controlling for the tendency of parents to be of the same social class as offspring) is a substantially weaker predictor than 1/4, which would again explain why few of the personalized calculators ask that question.
As far as genetics ‘kicking in’ as a bigger factor by age 80 that’s an interesting hypothesis, subject to a more solid source being given. But practically speaking the people most focused on predicting seem to be middle age people, to plan retirement or just generally a time of life when mortality is foremost in mind. Younger and very old people don’t see usually as interested in their statistical LE, IME anyway, no solid source on that either though.
I’ve read some books on this stuff and seen similar comments. Up to about 75-80, a lot of your health issues are due to life style- smoking, drinking, eating badly- all that.
But after a certain age, if you haven’t really damaged yourself too badly, then it starts to become more and more of a genetic roulette.
This might explain the 105 year olds who drink scotch and smoke cigars and are in fine health. They never really overdid it when younger and their genes took care of them. (And a few, very few, overdo it and still live a surprisingly long time.)
