←back to thread

Life expectancy rise in rich countries slows down: took 30 years to prove

(www.nature.com)
201 points andsoitis | 1 comments | 15 Oct 24 13:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.362s | source
Show context
zaik ◴[16 Oct 24 05:30 UTC] No.41855911[source]▶

   Overall, the study found that children born since 2010 have a relatively small chance of living to 100 (5.1% chance for women and 1.8% chance for men). The most likely cohort to see a full century are women in Hong Kong, with a 12.8% chance.
How do you quantify the chance of a teenager living to 100?
replies(2): >>41856712 #>>41863869 #
1. jjk166 ◴[16 Oct 24 21:07 UTC] No.41863869[source]▶
It's assumed that the odds of dying at a given age are frozen. So if someone is currently 15, their odds of making it to 100 are their odds of surviving 16 times their odds of surviving 17 times their odds of surviving 18, and so forth. If you're in the US, as of 2021, for all ages over 11 your life expectancy decreases by less than 1 year per year, and if you've attained the ripe old age of 119, your life expectancy is only one month shorter than that of someone 2 years younger than you.

Many demographic trends like fertility rate are treated the same way. While it is not a very accurate prediction for how long a current young person will actually live, it's a consistent metric that doesn't rely on a particular model of future events. It's good for discussions like this where we're more interested in how the value is changing than the actual value itself.