On Sep 6, 2007, at 3:11 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> These mortality figures (logevity at birth) are well and good for a
> very
> rough and ready assessment of the health of a whole nation in
> comparison
> to other nations or to its own (reasonably distant path). For
> almost any
> other purpose they should be looked at skeptically. As long ago as the
> 1950s a number of public health writers were pointing out, for
> example,
> that if one measured life expectancy _at 60_ rather than at birth,
> life
> expectancy in 1955 was not much different than it had been in 1890.
> (Example produced for this post -- I don't remember any of the
> details.)
> The great extension of life expectancy was almost wholly due to the
> great reductions in infant and child mortality. After that, not much
> change.
>
> I wonder, for example, if one's base line was (say) 15, and the
> question
> was proportion still alive at 45, would there be a gender difference,
> and if so which way.
Women still live longer. And life expectancy continues to lengthen. At whatever age you choose.
You know, one of the great things about the Internet is that you can find out this sort of information in even less time than it takes to type a cranky note about a fading 50-year old memory.
<http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_14.pdf>
Life expectancy for a 60-year old female:
1900-02: 15.21 1949-51: 18.50 2003: 23.70
60-year old male:
1900-02: 14.33 1949-51: 15.68 2003: 20.40
You can find this all further broken down by race, as well as tables showing how many people remain alive at a given age based on year of birth from 1900-2003.