Suppose, for an instant, that there's nothing unique about you, other than being an average American. And as an average American, how much longer can you reasonably expect to live?
That's not an idle question! While unique circumstances such as your heredity and your lifestyle choices certainly affect your odds of reaching a given age, where the government is concerned, you're just a statistic. A numeric blip around which things like spending levels for Medicare and Social Security benefits are determined.
Don't take it personally. That's just how politicians and bureaucrats truly see you: as a number to be managed.
You should, however, be concerned. Since how long you'll live is something that might affect their schemes, it's in your best interest to know how you stack up against the average American. After all, if enough people outperform their expectations, they'll have to make adjustments. The kind of adjustments that might significantly affect how you intend to live out your life. That's why you need to know how long they're expecting you, dear faceless statistic, to live!
And that's what our latest tool is all about! We extracted the latest remaining life expectancy data from the National Center for Health Statistics' United States Life Tables, 2004, which was just published in December 2007. From that data, we constructed a mathematical model to represent the remaining life expectancy for all Americans given their current age. The chart below shows the model we created against the official remaining life expectancy data:
All that's left is to enter your current age into the tool below - we'll tell you how many years the U.S. government expects that you'll continue being alive, along with the age to which they feel they can reasonably expect you will live.
If you'd like to get a better indication of how much time you, as an individual, might reasonably expect to live, we recommend the Living to 100 calculator, which allows you to factor in many of the unique factors that can significantly influence how long you'll actually live.
Labels: demographics, health, tool
Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:
ironman at politicalcalculations
Thanks in advance!
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