Talk:Life expectancy
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Calculation of life expectancy
Can someone add something here about how life expectancy is calculated? Could someone please explain what age-adjusted life expectancy means or how it is calculated?
Is the reduction in deaths due to war in the West included in life expectancy calculations (since the World War I, II periods)? I would assume so - jlm255
- In theory, age-adjusted life expectancy for some group is the average age-of-death for that group. One could find the life expectancy for "people who turned 10 years old in 1890" by tracking down exactly when each of them died, and taking the average. "life expectancy" alone is the same as age-adjusted life expectancy for age zero -- the life expectancy for "people born in 1880" is a bit less than "people who turned 10 years old in 1890", because the first group includes all of the second group, plus a few more people (those people born in 1880 that died before age 10), and those small numbers make the average smaller.
- (Would it make any sense to use the median rather than the mean ?)
- In practice, we usually want the age-adjusted life expectancy for some group that *hasn't* all died yet. I imagine this is estimated using extrapolation from last-year's death rates. Could someone explain in the article: How is life expectancy really calculated? (I hesitate to write about how I imagine it is calculated). --DavidCary 05:32, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
"principal determinant" is inappropriate
Current text: "race was the principal determinant of life expectancy in the United States"
Comment: The reference cited does not use the phrase "principal determinant." It does say,“During this century gender has overtaken race as a determinant of life expectancy (non-white females out-live white males).” One could say that in the early 20th century, race was a greater determinant of life expectancy than was sex. The importance of a determinant depends on what other determinants are included. To say race was the principal determinant implies there was no greater determinant: a somewhat sweeping generalization...
NPOV
I believe this article is still in need of some NPOV editing. It fails to make very clear that a high statistical life expectancy at any one point does not imply that people are actually going to live very long, even when no unexpected catastrophes occur. As a somewhat exaggerated example, it is possible (though very unlikely) that virtually all human beings alive today will die in thirty years as a result of some degenerative disease they've already been affected with. As a more realistic example, those people (in the US) currently in their middle age have overwhelmingly had a childhood with considerably more physical exercise (and lower rates of obesity and asthma, for example) than today's children. This probably means that when the actual life expectancy (i.e. the average time they had left to live) for today's children can be calculated (i.e. when all of them have died), it might be considerably lower than what statistical life expectancy today would suggest.
Prumpf 15:12, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
NPOV??
Removed two paragraphs from the end of the article. They were out of place, and largely irrelevant. Anti female perspective as well. I'm new here, but if anyone has an opinion let me know.
