Long Life

[YoungWillz 21,217]

Musings on lifespan may already be catered for:

 

Edited April 9, 2018 by Death Impends
Threads merged

[theoldlady 2,343]

8 hours ago, paddyfool said:

Just a thread to look at life expectancy figures.

 

Worldwide, life expectancy, which is basically the median expected span of years from birth to death based on current age-specific death rates, is increasing year on year (with the current global population average at 70.5 between 2010 and 2015, according to the UN). Individual countries range from a life expectancy of 83.7 (and rising) in Japan to 50.1 in Sierra Leone.  

 

As an aside, it's worth noting that the median is nor the same as the mode, since of course the distribution is skewed; for instance, in Western European countries like the UK, although life expectancy is in the early 80s, the most likely age that an average individual might expect to die based on current stats is in their late 80s. 

 

Country averages only tell you so much, as well; for instance, in the USA, if you break it down by state, life expectancy ranges from 75.0 in Mississippi (similar to Malaysia, Romania or Brazil) to 81.3 in Hawaii (similar to the UK or Ireland).  And if you break it down still further, ie by county, life expectancy in the USA ranges from 66 (well below the international population average) to 87 (well above Japan); and generally the lowest performing counties have not been rising in life expectancy along with the rest of the country over the last couple of decades.

 

What gets a little disconcerting, meanwhile, is that life expectancy may now be peaking in both the USA (which has recently had two successive years of small drops in life expectancy, with a rise in drug overdose deaths, homicides, suicides, and road traffic deaths, while other causes of death remained largely static) and the EU (which has recently had a one year drop in life expectancy, although I'm not aware of the breakdown by cause).  Since life expectancy measures only the risk of dying before very old age (it doesn't matter a jot to such calculations in any country on earth whether you die at 85 or 115), it is particularly weighted in favour of measuring the deaths of the young, and thus works to some extent as a quality of life indicator. The homeless, the unemployed, and people with severe mental illnesses certainly have much lower life expectancies than the average, for instance.

 

Is it fair to ask, then, whether things are getting worse? (In the west at least, and for everyone but deathlisters, obituary writers and undertakers, that is, since the combination of this peak with our aging population may presage a bumper crop for the reaper ahead).

Thanks for this information. For more info on this Please Google: Middle-aged White Americans are dying of despair. This is based on a PhD study which found out that the life expectancies in the USA are declining because of Deaths related to opiates and alcoholism and the use of and addiction to prescription pain Killers. People are literally dying of hopelessness. There are a Half million LESS people in the USA than there should be because this. 

[paddyfool 379]

That does fit with some of the trends - the recent drop in US life expectancy seems to have been confined to the black and white populations and left the hispanic population, who already had a higher life expectancy (on a par with western Europe) untouched:

 

"Between 2014 and 2015, life expectancy at birth was stable 
at 82.0 years for Hispanic persons, decreased 0.2 years to 
78.7 years for non-Hispanic white persons, and decreased 
0.2 years to 75.1 years for non-Hispanic black persons"

[paddyfool 379]

Incidentally, this merging in of a thread musing about population trends in life expectancy with a thread on how to live a long life as an individual seems a tad odd to me.

[Lord Fellatio Nelson 6,226]

5 minutes ago, paddyfool said:

Incidentally, this merging in of a thread musing about population trends in life expectancy with a thread on how to live a long life as an individual seems a tad odd to me.

I agree.