Age-adjusted life expectancy
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Age-Adjusted Life Expectancy is the estimation of how long a person is expected to live based on their current age. This is a more useful statistic than simply calculating the average lifespan of an entire population, because it reveals trends such as infant mortality and quality of senior health care.
For example, a population that has a raw life expectancy of 75 years may have an age-adjusted expectancy of 60 more years for a 25 year old person (surpassing the average), but only a 40-year future expectancy for a newborn, thus showing that members of that population are likely to survive to the raw average, if they make it past childhood, but while they are in those years, they are in much greater danger than older members of the population.
Other useful information can be gleaned from age-adjusted lifespan statistics as medical technology changes over time. For example, in the United States the raw average life expectancy over the past 100 years has increased by over 50%. However, the age adjusted expectancy for 60 year old persons has only increased 10%. This means that the improvements in medical technology have done much to decrease mortality among the young, but relatively little to help the elderly. In other words, although the odds of living to old age have increased, the maximum probable lifespan has not changed dramatically.
The age-adjusted statistics will become more meaningful in the future assuming that medical technology continues its accelerating trend. If raw average life expectancy increases at an accelerating rate, it will become more meaningful to know exactly how that effects an individual as they age along with the technology. For example, a person born in 1980, who is 25 in 2005, with a life expectancy of 75, will be expected to die in 2055. However, when they are 50 in the year 2030, the average life expectancy may have increased to say 100. Does this now mean that the person is expected to live to 2080? And what if the life expectancy in say 2070, increases to 125? Unfortunately, this is not a likely opportunity for immortality, because even though in 2030 the average life expectancy may be 100, our hypothetical person has been without the benefits of futuristic medicine for the first 50 years of his or her life, and probably will not see his or her 100th birthday as likely as a person born in that year. Thus the age-adjusted life expectancy for a 50 year old in 2030 will probably be significantly lower than the average for a newborn, although if organ replacement becomes routine the differential could change.
- See also: Life expectancy