Re:The Unrealized Horrors of Population Explosion
by wutbrodo on Monday June 01, 2015 @03:46PM
(#9641596)
I can think of a couple of reasons:
1) I'm not obsessive enough to think that making an estimate of life expectancy far in the future is a good use of time when it has no impact on the point I'm making.
2) More directly: more than 25% of 16 y/o's are expected to live to 100[1]. We're talking in this thread about rich DINKs in high-income countries, and income and life expectancy are correlated; According to a recent study by UMich, those in the top quintile of income born in _1940_ have a life expectancy at age 55 of 90 years old[2]. It seems an extraordinary claim to say that life expectancy won't climb by (at least) another few years for the richest cohort of people in the world over the next ~century.
If you're going to be childishly pedantic, at least try and be accurate.
I'm aware that life expectancy at age 55 is not the same as LE at age 18, but at-birth life expectancy numbers aren't available broken-down by income, for obvious reasons. It turns out that (unsurprisingly), the rich have a very low mortality rate before age 55, so this doesn't particularly skew the numbers.
1) I'm not obsessive enough to think that making an estimate of life expectancy far in the future is a good use of time when it has no impact on the point I'm making.
2) More directly: more than 25% of 16 y/o's are expected to live to 100[1]. We're talking in this thread about rich DINKs in high-income countries, and income and life expectancy are correlated; According to a recent study by UMich, those in the top quintile of income born in _1940_ have a life expectancy at age 55 of 90 years old[2]. It seems an extraordinary claim to say that life expectancy won't climb by (at least) another few years for the richest cohort of people in the world over the next ~century.
If you're going to be childishly pedantic, at least try and be accurate.
[1]http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/aug/04/live-to...
[2] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/04/18/the-richer-you-are...
I'm aware that life expectancy at age 55 is not the same as LE at age 18, but at-birth life expectancy numbers aren't available broken-down by income, for obvious reasons. It turns out that (unsurprisingly), the rich have a very low mortality rate before age 55, so this doesn't particularly skew the numbers.