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A comment on The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade for young people. Parent comment

Re:The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade... by rsync on Tuesday October 13, 2015 @03:33PM (#10382909)
"In some hand wavy statistical sense, those old people you see bagging groceries probably would have been dead 50 years ago."

No, some proportion of them would have been dead between 0 and 3 years old (which is what brings down the life expectancy numbers dramatically) but 100 years ago those 50 year olds would still be living to 60, just like they do now.

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Re:The world needs at least 600M new jobs in the next decade... by maxerickson on Tuesday October 13, 2015 @03:53PM (#10383027)
Life expectancy at middle ages has expanded quite a bit:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

A 20 year old can expect to live well into their 70s rather than just reaching 60 (so an expectancy of ~55 years compared to 40 years).

But sure, the gains are mostly from early survival rates.

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