Talk:Life expectancy/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Map is horribly unreadable to someone with even mild colour blindness

I have only mild red-green colour deficiency but the use of dark impure colours, most of which occupy the green-yellow part of the spectrum on the diagram depicting the life expectancy for each country means that I'm seeing five of them as indistinguishable from black (the first two and the last three) and thee of the others as very similar shades of yellow/orange, which are distinguishable in their larger chunks on the map but not in the legend.

It's not like this is the first totally unreadable diagram on Wikipedia, but I really wish that people would consider that not everyone has flawless colour vision before they colour a whole map with a dozen versions of the same colour. Small bits of colour, like lines on charts and tiny squares in legends had might as well be shades of gray for someone with even a mild colour deficiency, and good luck connecting names to those colours. ("It's the purple one" "Oh...you mean one of the four slightly different blue ones?") —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andy16666 (talk • contribs) 04:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

You are totally right. I am going to upload another map as soon as I have time for it, including blue colour as well. Note that the colour spectrum is sometimes just not enough when there is a large number of categories/legends included. I'll try to do my best though. Panos84 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Panos84 (talk • contribs) 09:23, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That should help a lot, although I wish more graphing software let you use symbols and colours at the same time. Andy16666 (talk) 01:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Over 80 and under 40 have the same color, black WTF? various grey shades are no good?--Mark v1.0 (talk) 04:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Confused about how the map quantities are calculated

I think the map is very insightful and a great asset to this page. However, I was under the impression that life expectancy was a function of how old you are. For example, insurance companies spend a great deal of effort coming up with new estimates each year of plots of life expectancy versus age, and they make a new such plot each year. Thus, it begs the question, "Which age is being used in such plots for the main plot on the wiki page?"

I would assume that the most simple age to choose would be age 0, or the life expectancy at birth, for the numbers on the plot. However, in that case, the numbers on the plot look too large to me. The life expectancy at birth is still around 40, isn't it?

So, you can see my confusion.

Map not updated

Hi, if you compare the map shown on this article with the list of countries by life expectancy (see article), you'll see differences. For instance, while life expectancy is higher in Spain than in France, France's colored dark green while Spain is light green. I don't know how to change it... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.62.37.2 (talk) 11:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The map is updated. Maybe you are looking at the UN list. According to the CIA World Factbook list France is higher than Spain. If u want to see the UN map, you can go to the "list of countries by life expectancy" article. Panos84 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Panos84 (talk • contribs) 09:13, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Time-line for humans

Why is there a question as a "comment" in the time-line for humans? --Ireon 12:24, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Marginally?

This article says that medicine only marginally increased life expectancy. That sounds like nonsense to me.

Antibiotics

Don't these statistics clearly show that the biggest single impact on mortality rates occurs in the mid 20th century after the advent of antibiotics in tablet form becoming widely available?

Actually it is sanitation, leading to eliminating of cholera and other water born deaths.
Correct. If you look at the curve of time versus life expectancy, there is not a discernable change in the slope of the line at the time of antibiotic introduction,

mbiguous and awkward statements in overview

The second paragraph of the overview made a claim about Hispanic versus white American life expectancy, followed by a parenthetical claim that the assertion was correct. A later parenthetical statement claimed that it "might not" still be correct in 2006. I have tried to remove some of the ambiguity and potential POV issues from the paragraph by switching to a "group A"/"group B" style presentation. dtony 21:47, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Calculation of life expectancy

Correction to the formula, using survival curve t_p_x, we simply need to integrate it or sum it.

Sorry, I seem to have snarled up the formula - the previous one was wrong - it shd be Sigma (t * (sub_t)p(sub_x)) but my TEX is clearly wrong - can somewone put it right please?

Thanks & sorry all round.

Johnbibby 20:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
I changed it now. I think it should be correct. Tengfred 08:35, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks ::Johnbibby 09:51, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Can someone add something here about how life expectancy is calculated? Could someone please explain what age-adjusted life expectancy means or how it is calculated?

Is the reduction in deaths due to war in the West included in life expectancy calculations (since the World War I, II periods)? I would assume so - jlm255

In theory, age-adjusted life expectancy for some group is the average age-of-death for that group. One could find the life expectancy for "people who turned 10 years old in 1890" by tracking down exactly when each of them died, and taking the average. "life expectancy" alone is the same as age-adjusted life expectancy for age zero -- the life expectancy for "people born in 1880" is a bit less than "people who turned 10 years old in 1890", because the first group includes all of the second group, plus a few more people (those people born in 1880 that died before age 10), and those small numbers make the average smaller.
(Would it make any sense to use the median rather than the mean ?)
In practice, we usually want the age-adjusted life expectancy for some group that *hasn't* all died yet. I imagine this is estimated using extrapolation from last-year's death rates. Could someone explain in the article: How is life expectancy really calculated? (I hesitate to write about how I imagine it is calculated). --DavidCary 05:32, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

NEOLITHIC ANOMALY: Can somebody please explain the dropoff in life expectancy for neolithic peoples? The link to Neolithic does not add any clarification, only a description of changing lifestyles. Presumably, lowered life expectancy is do to the close proximity of newly domesticated animals: the bacteria, virusus, and parasites that they harbor. I'm fairly sure this is correct, but I'm not an expert. Can somebody clarify? I think this is critical to our historical understanding of human life expectancy.

I believe it's mainly due to a poorer diet. Farmed food is poorer in nutrients than hunter/gatherer food. However, farming supports far more people per unit area, so that way of life spreads. Jared Diamond has written some good screed on this topic, see [1]WolfKeeper 19:25, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

"principal determinant" is inappropriate

Current text: "race was the principal determinant of life expectancy in the United States"

Comment: The reference cited does not use the phrase "principal determinant." It does say,“During this century gender has overtaken race as a determinant of life expectancy (non-white females out-live white males).” One could say that in the early 20th century, race was a greater determinant of life expectancy than was sex. The importance of a determinant depends on what other determinants are included. To say race was the principal determinant implies there was no greater determinant: a somewhat sweeping generalization...

NPOV

I believe this article is still in need of some NPOV editing. It fails to make very clear that a high statistical life expectancy at any one point does not imply that people are actually going to live very long, even when no unexpected catastrophes occur. As a somewhat exaggerated example, it is possible (though very unlikely) that virtually all human beings alive today will die in thirty years as a result of some degenerative disease they've already been affected with. As a more realistic example, those people (in the US) currently in their middle age have overwhelmingly had a childhood with considerably more physical exercise (and lower rates of obesity and asthma, for example) than today's children. This probably means that when the actual life expectancy (i.e. the average time they had left to live) for today's children can be calculated (i.e. when all of them have died), it might be considerably lower than what statistical life expectancy today would suggest.

Prumpf 15:12, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)


NPOV??

Removed two paragraphs from the end of the article. They were out of place, and largely irrelevant. Anti female perspective as well. I'm new here, but if anyone has an opinion let me know.

VOTE!! - HDI in country infobox/template?

The Human Development Index (HDI) is a standard UN measure/rank of how developed a country is or is not. It is a composite index based on GDP per capita (PPP), literacy, life expectancy, and school enrollment. However, as it is a composite index/rank, some may challenge its usefulness or applicability as information.

Thus, the following question is put to a vote:

Should any, some, or all of the following be included in the Wikipedia country infobox/template:

(1) Human Development Index (HDI) for applicable countries, with year;
(2) Rank of country’s HDI;
(3) Category of country’s HDI (high, medium, or low)?

YES / NO / UNDECIDED/ABSTAIN - vote here

Thanks!

E Pluribus Anthony 01:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

edits by 70.251.189.154

The edits by 70.251.189.154 on 2005-10-15 were so badly written (with some pov thrown in for good measure) that I completely rewrote it. There was some sense in it, so I kept the bit about the brain being able to live up to 200 years. Does anyone know how correct this is?

Really now. How could anyone possibly know the answer to that question?

Also, those life expectancies from the Encyclopaedia Britannica are very low. I assume that's caused by infant mortality. If so, that should be mentioned here too (it's mentioned above it, but that isn't enough). DirkvdM 05:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

average life span redirect

Life span no longer redirects here and is now a disambiguation page, in its place I have made average life span redirect here. Intangir 20:31, 5 December 2005 (UTC)


Comment: when listing lifespans for various peoples why not list at least two: from birth and from , say, age 10. This will give a clearer idea of what the differences are. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html gives 67 extra years for men-women average in the U.S. as or 2005 and the site listed in the article gives 41 extra years for ancient Romans. This is less dramatic than the figures cited in the article.

Three-score years and ten

Can anyone shine light on the discrepancy between the biblical ‘three-score years and ten’ and the quoted average lifespan in classical times of 28?

Is it to do with the difference between mean (average) and mode? (e.g. more people died at 70 than at any other age). Or to do with age-adjusted life expectancy which excludes infant mortality?

I really can’t believe the Romans considered themselves on borrowed time after they were 28 (as I’m sure they did once they were past 70). Someone must have explained this conundrum, somewhere…

CDV 14:16, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Oops – just noticed the post above mentioning the link to Life expectancy in Roman times, which I will try to follow up on. I’d still love to know if anyone has more to offer. CDV 14:30, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Even the Wikipedia section on Sparta (around 5th Century BC) states: "Spartan boys left home for military boarding school at the age of 7 and were required to serve in the army until age thirty.[9] Then they passed into the active reserve, where they remained until the age of sixty-five." [9]# ^ a b c The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History p. 103 - Rodney Stark

Life expectancy in the Communist countries

European communist countries (such as the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary) were characterized by decreasing life expectancy and increasing mortality (especially among adult men) from the late 1960s, after an initial rise after the Russian Revolution.

This is completely false, at least about Poland, but I see no reason why should it be true with other countries. Here's the data from GUS for average life expectancy in Poland:

YearMenWomen
0y15y30 lat45y60y75y0y15y30y45y60y75y
195056,0751,0438,1225,4614,556,9261,6855,6642,3229,2317,057,80
195155,1150,6137,7225,0414,186,5260,6755,1441,8628,6916,567,49
195257,5951,2838,2125,4314,416,7663,0755,8442,3929,1416,917,67
195359,5852,7139,2826,0814,756,8765,0557,1643,2029,6417,197,78
195459,8052,4038,8425,6014,176,2565,0656,6742,6729,0516,577,19
195560,8253,3439,7326,4815,097,2466,1957,7643,6830,0217,468,13
195662,2953,6739,9826,6315,097,1467,5258,0943,9430,2117,567,88
195761,2053,0439,3926,1014,556,8466,7057,6943,5429,8217,177,62
195863,0854,5840,8527,4815,767,4768,5759,1144,8431,0118,208,22
195962,7154,0440,3126,9615,237,0568,3058,8844,5730,7217,907,92
196064,9454,9641,1427,7115,887,5370,6059,8845,5231,5818,708,58
196164,9154,7741,0327,6015,807,6770,7859,9845,5831,6118,728,74
196264,5354,4340,6427,2515,427,2670,4959,6645,2631,2918,398,40
196365,4154,9741,1527,7515,907,5071,5260,2845,8331,8718,948,81
196465,7855,1041,1527,6715,667,3871,6060,2745,7831,7318,748,55
196566,5855,4841,5228,0516,057,6872,4060,6446,1332,0519,048,77
196666,8755,5641,6228,1816,177,7572,8560,8846,3632,2619,258,93
196766,4455,0541,0927,6815,787,4172,6160,6046,0431,8918,858,47
196867,0455,2741,3627,9416,087,9373,5561,2646,7132,5619,559,35
196966,5054,7840,8227,4115,627,5973,0960,8246,2632,1219,158,91
197066,6254,8140,8727,4715,687,6073,3361,0146,4532,2819,238,90
197166,1353,9840,0926,7614,976,8273,2560,6346,0831,9318,878,51
197267,3255,1141,1927,8316,037,5874,1761,4646,8832,6819,608,96
197367,1554,7540,8227,4715,767,3274,3061,4046,8232,6119,528,89
197467,8055,1541,1427,7416,027,5174,6461,5846,9732,7619,668,99
197567,0254,5040,5827,2715,727,2474,2661,3246,7332,5019,438,72
197666,9254,2740,3027,1015,697,3474,5561,5046,8932,6819,628,96
197766,4953,9340,0526,9115,637,2074,5061,5046,9132,6919,678,97
197866,3653,6539,7526,6515,457,0774,5361,3846,7932,5919,568,83
197966,7953,9540,0526,9015,727,3074,9161,6447,0532,8219,809,06
198066,0153,1239,2426,1915,186,9274,4461,1846,5332,3619,388,76
198167,1054,1840,2626,9915,797,4975,2461,9247,3033,0920,079,41
198267,2454,2840,3427,0515,837,4775,2061,9247,3133,0720,079,40
198367,0453,9740,0426,8015,677,3575,1661,7747,1532,9319,929,27
198466,8453,6739,6626,4915,547,3074,9761,5446,9032,7119,709,10
198566,5053,2639,2126,0415,147,0474,8161,3146,6532,4619,498,98
198666,7653,4239,3526,1315,257,2675,1361,5446,8832,6619,699,17
198766,8153,4839,3826,1415,277,3175,2061,5946,9232,7319,779,26
198867,1553,7439,6226,4015,477,5475,6761,8747,1932,9720,089,47
198966,7653,3339,3426,2115,427,5575,4561,7947,1332,9219,929,45
199066,5153,0639,1026,0415,317,4875,4961,8347,1632,9719,969,44
199166,1152,5838,6225,6415,097,3875,2761,5446,8832,7319,749,21
199266,7153,0939,0826,0515,407,6575,7061,9147,2433,0420,039,44
199367,3753,6739,5626,3615,487,6376,0062,1447,4433,2020,109,41
199467,5153,9239,8426,6715,767,8376,0862,3847,6933,4420,359,61
199567,6253,9239,8126,6815,847,9276,3962,5647,8733,6120,529,73
199668,1254,3340,1826,8915,937,9476,5762,6647,9533,6620,529,65
199768,4554,4640,3527,1016,138,1576,9962,9448,2333,9120,809,87
199868,8754,8340,6927,3916,388,4277,3463,2248,5134,1821,0410,03
199968,8354,7640,6227,3116,298,3277,4963,3148,6034,2621,1310,09
200069,7455,5941,3627,9316,728,5778,0063,7649,0334,6521,5110,36
200170,2156,0241,7728,2717,038,8178,3864,1249,3834,9821,8010,55
200270,4256,2342,0128,4817,198,8278,7864,5149,7735,3522,1510,77
200370,5256,2842,0028,4617,138,6778,9064,5749,8335,3922,1710,77
200470,6756,4042,1228,5917,388,9179,2364,8850,1335,6822,4811,02

Taw 21:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Taw, I believe your GUS table just proves the point you wanted to disprove. Look, if you consider the "Late 60's" to be years 1967-1969, you get the average LE of: 41.1 ys for 30 years old, 27.7ys for 45 years old and 15.8ys for 60 years old. The averages for years 1987-1989 (just before Poland turned non-communist) are lower in each group - 39.4, 26.3 and 15.4 respectively. So, one can conclude that during these 2 decades the LE did indeed fall for adult men in Poland.

Naapi 23 September 2006

Misleading expectancy after youth

Addressing a couple of the questions above about the discrepancy between the short life expectancy given in the article and the lifespans given in historical sources is that the "average life expectancy" of a population includes deaths of infant and children, who were in past times much more likely to die. This article needs to address this and to discuss the life expectancy of persons who live past the age of 10 or so, which is much higher than would be indicated by the misleading "average life expectancy". It might also be appropriate to incorporate data about accidents, frontier deaths, etc. - Centrx 20:46, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Cats life expectancy

I was shocked to see that cats have a lifespans in the 20-30 year range. Is this true? I thought 15 was an old cat. Wright123 16:13, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Serious Problems

This page has some fairly serious problems. Life expectancy in 20th Century United states was strongly affected by sewers at the turn of the century, and strongly affected by antibiotics and slightly later by vaccines in the middle of the century. While much of the improvment is due to improved infant mortality rates, there has been a strong flattening of the curve at older ages. That is, people did tend to die from bacterial infections and viruses after infancy and childhood and modern medicine did greatly reduce these causes of death. Also, roughly every 3rd line of this write up should reference a CDC publication. Chuck Simmons 04:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Update

This statement may need updating: "Homo sapiens live on average 37 years in Zambia and on average 81 years in Japan."

According to the 2006 World Health Report <http://www.who.int/entity/whr/2006/whr06_en.pdf> Japan now shares the top spot with Monaco and San Marino at age 82, while Zimbabwe has dropped to 36 years. -- cybercommuter

dog lifespan

"Dogs live 10-25 years."

Is this accurate? I have never heard of a dog living 25 years. Maybe 15 years tops. Is this supposed to be for cats? Because cats can live this long.

The record is over 28 years currently. It's not that well defined.WolfKeeper 22:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Grammar Police

I'm going to fix a few typos and grammar whatsits (run-ons, passive voice, etc). No plans to change context or layout in any significant way.--Legomancer 12:38, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this article may need more than gentle finessing. I re-worked the introduction - keeping it simple and to the point. There is a lot of good information here, but the order/presentation is not ideal. It's kind of jumbled and stream-of-consciousness like. If nobody has any objection to the type of edits I did in the first few paragraphs, I'll standardize the entire article. Again, I don't plan to omit or change the content, just the order of some of the information and get rid of some unneeded repetition. I'll give it a few days and check back here before I do anything else.--Legomancer 13:10, 31 August 2006 (UTC)


Discrepancy with history

Can someone tell me why the lifespans on the charts seem to break with historians? I've been reading Greek and Roman poetry, and done some bit of studying on even Mongol history. The Greeks seemed to identify the "Seven Ages of Man" as being the average. They detailed each age at about a decade. This means that the ancient Greeks figured the average lifespan to be 70. Many merchants and peasants lived to be 50 and 60 (read, not excellent nutruition or healthcare). Ghenghis Kahn lived to be 65 (died of a hunting accident, not old age) and have several advisors who were into their mid-70's. Leonidas (King of the Spartans) was about 65 when he died in the Hot Gates, and many of his senior officers were well into their 50's.

So, hisotry seems to disagree with many of the accepted numbers that I hear people talk about today; and the chart given here. Can someone tell me why, or point to a source that might explain the difference?

I doubt the standard answer of "nutrition and healthcare of the rich" because even the lower classes lived to be 50 and 60 commonly.

A lot of it has to do with infant and child mortality. If you lived to be 20, you were often good to go to 60. But a lot of people didn't make it to 20, which slants the stats.

Leomarth 18:52, 18 September 2006 (UTC) \


== Upcoming merger of 'age-adjusted life expectancy' entry Giving anyone who cares a head's up about something I will most likely do in the near future. There is no such thing as 'age-adjusted life expectancy'. This is based on a gross misunderstanding of what life expectancy is. I should mention here also that the current absence of a definition of 'life expectancy' in the entry is pretty pathetic. Life expectancy is the expected remaining number of years left to be lived. To talk about life expectancy without mentioning an age is technically inaccurate. What most people here call simply life expectancy is in fact life expectancy at birth. Thus, the so-called 'age-adjusted life expectancy' is in fact just 'life expectancy'.

Summary of what I intend to do: 1- strip the 'age-adjusted life expectancy entry of its substance. Put in a rediredct and explain the nature of the misunderstanding 2- Include what's valid in that into this entry 3- Insert a first paragraph here that will contain only the definition of LE 4- Revamp the method section. Trust me ... it needs it. 5- Clean up the language (like any misuse of the word rate, probability, lifespan, and other such misconception-prone words) of the other sections, without however changing the substance

Currently accepting objections ... EpiDemog Oct 12, 2006

the hell?

"Likely extending back in time significantly, since their lives have not changed significantly. At birth: 34 At age 15: 54 At age 50: 67"

shouldn't life expectancy be the same at any age since their death age won't effect the age they are now? Or am I just an idiot?

No need to feel like an idiot, this is complicated, partly because the common usage of the term life expectancy is not exactly the same as the technical term explained here.
From the first paragraph of the article: " technically life expectancy means the expected number of years remaining to live, and it can be calculated for any age." The numbers you quote are not really life expectancy, but expected age at death for people of diffrent ages. The reason the numbers change so much is high child mortality, meaning that if you survived your childhood, you are likely to live to a fairly high age.
Hope that helps clarifying things, and if you have any suggestions for how the article should be made more comprehensible, they are welcome :-)
Tengfred 22:22, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

old age

this is retarded "In other words, even if a person never dies of disease, accident or violence, we can expect them to die of "old age" by that time."

scientifically speaking. there is no such thing as dying of "old age" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.228.216.45 (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC).

gender inequality?

Apologies for intervening without contribution to the article, but I've recently become interested in the issue of different life expectancies for males and females. However, except for one side-sentence, this is not even mentioned in the article. According to the CIA factbook (cited in the article), the difference in life expectancy is nowhere (on a quick glance, that is) less than four years and in many places (in the western world, even) 7 years or more.

I find this aspect very important to the question of life expectancy, and the usage of "gender-neutral" mean age as inaccurate standardization that doesn't reflect reality as well as it would, were the genders separated. Just wanted to know why this subject is not at all addressed in the article.

I'm aware that neither my knowledge or skills with wikipedia are good enough to do this "addressing" myself.

regards, Mikael 84.231.110.121 10:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Eskimos¸

What's the life expectancy of eskimos? 27.5 years or somewhere about 40 years? Could this info be included into article, considering they only eat meat ... --193.95.200.250 21:06, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


Possible plagarism?

This table can be found on numerous other websites using identical formatting and wording. A simple google search for "life expectancy over history" brings up most of these.

--24.20.133.212 22:54, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Edits by 138.130.191.209

These edits appear to be random defacement... such at "Life expectancy is(about 3242546 years)"... Perhaps someone can better determine if any of the edits this person made were legitimate... IrishFBall32 03:51, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Standard Deviation Graphs

I would like to see a set of standard deviation bell curves showing how long a individuals from different parts of the world are likely to live. In my opinion, this article would benefit greatly. Is this research within anyone's capabilities; can this be easily done?--Follow Christ 17:04, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Map / Data discrepencies

CIA World Fact Book data places Canada in the over 80 group for estimated 2007, but map indicates that it's between 75-80 yrs. With the health care debate as heated as it is - well you get the picture.

US: 78.00 yrs.

Canada: 80.34 yrs.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

2.34 average years is not statistically insignificant.

The map seems to be out of date for a number of countries, according to the list of countries by life expectancy. I updated all the 80+ ones, but I can't get the map to overwrite the old one... Does anyone know how to do this? I've saved my new version at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Life_expectancy_world_map2.png TastyCakes 16:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Non-living things

Should it be mentioned that "life expectancy" is also calculated for non-living things?--Chealer 02:52, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

NATIVE groups??

I'm removing this category because it makes NO SENSE. Native to where?? To make my point, Lapps are native to northern Sweden, Norway and Finland, but their life expectancy is over double the 34 years listed under "native groups." The Japanese are native to Japan, and they have even higher life expectancies. See my point? Kemet 01:15, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

"Timeline for humans" may give the wrong impression

First of all, the evidence for the average life expectancy at birth is not based on ancient statistical data. This deserves to be mentioned since it means that new evidence might radically alter the numbers at any time. Secondly, local variations should be expected to be vary, just as they are between countries today. Thirdly, one might want to complement the age distribution to the life expectancy chart, to offset the idea that people only got to be 22 years old in ancient Rome. Or at least caution the interpretation to stave off the idea. People got to similar ages then as now. It is just that more people are assumed to have died at an early age. If we followed the apparent logic of the charts, and adding for example the fact that we have grown a bit taller over the last 500 years, one might get the impression that all Romans were 22 years old, and 110 centimeters tall, which is ridiculous. They were as tall then as now and may have been as old. We have both archeological and historical evidence for this. It is just that probably fewer people survived the first ten years. It gets a bit like the tests that showed us that people with bigger shoes are better at mathematics. Why would that be true? The piece of missing information here was that people with bigger shoes were one year older, and went to 6th grade while the ones with smaller shoes went to 5th grade. DanielDemaret 06:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

One possible way to offset a misunderstanding might be to add a Median Age table. Not very exciting perhaps, since the numbers would not change very much across time and space, but perhaps less mis-guiding.82.182.115.181 06:55, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

McDermott Gift

Removed this section just now, added by 14:46, 8 November 2007 124.185.229.180 . Appears dubious beyond [citation needed], thus swift deletion pending any claim as to actuality of such a "Gift". Harami2000 22:20, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Google has never heard of it, it's obviously (to me) content vandalism. I've tagged the anonymous user. If they manage to cite it, then we can remove the tag, but I rather doubt that will happen.WolfKeeper 00:17, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

"calculating life expectancies" is confusing.

The paragraph "calculating life expectancies" is confusing, and unreadable for 99.9 percent of the population. It would be useful to add some comments such as: "Life expectancy is based on a single year's deaths for the entire population" (if that is indeed true). Then give a trivial example, such as a population consisting of 100 20-year-olds, 20 of whom die this year, and 20 80-year-olds, 10 of whom die this year. Can we determine the life expectancy of this population (of 120 persons), and exactly how would it be calculated?

I had always thought of life expectancy in a very different way: given the set of all persons born in a given year, calculate life expectancy based upon the age at death of each member of the population, until the last person dies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by LeroyVJunker (talk • contribs) 02:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

"Life expectancy of the mentally ill"

There is a section on female living longer, I suggest a section on those who live shorter lives.

"Mentally ill die 25 years earlier, on average" http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-05-03-mental-illness_N.htm

"One in four people will suffer from mental illness at some time in life, according to a report from the WHO"

"comorbidity high in seriously mentally ill" http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/1/5-a/FIG1

Can I and with whos approval do I add it?--Mark v1.0 (talk) 14:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

"regularly lose some blood"

"In their menstuation cycle females regularly lose some blood, which rids them of toxic heavy metals and of iron, which causes oxidative stress" This statement is seriously questionable, as its essentially an endorsement of the discredited practice of regular bleeding, and it pulls out that heavy metals stuff, which is typically the domain of new age crackpots. If there is some evidence of this remarkable claim, then it needs to be included; otherwise this incredible claim needs to be removed. 68.228.0.128 (talk) 19:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Non-statistical?

The lead sentence of this article currently begins "Life expectancy is a non statistical measure..." What on earth does this mean? Surely the measure must be statistical. Or is this a bit of obscure jargon, or simply vandalism that has gone unnoticed? Patche99z (talk) 10:04, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Glad to see that this has been fixed. Patche99z (talk) 10:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Where's the evidence?

"If you survived childhood you could expect to live into your old age in any time throughout history." A often repeated piece of folk science which I am sceptical about, given the prevalence of deadly infectious diseases, poor nutrition, and no health care. So what evidence is there for this assertion? Living in the far past must have been like living in the very worst countries on earth today, or worse. 80.2.195.52 (talk) 22:05, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about direct evidence, but there's more than a little indirect evidence about that statement. For example, Life expectancy at birth was 20-30 during Classical Greece-Rome (according to the table), yet (off the top of my head), Alexander the Great was considered young when he died at 32, and roman soldiers enlisted for 25 years ( you'd think that, if they rarely lived past 30 years of age, they would be given more time to live out their old age. Unless of course they enlisted on their fifth birthday). Although it's probably an overstatement to say that people who survived childhood would live to an old age, it can't be to far from the truth.Bob bobato (talk) 01:06, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
Also - you couldn't become a Senator until you were 40 (patricians) or 42 (plebs). This was having done 10 years (originally) in the army then various other posts with lower age limits. Only the most successful made it in "their" year and many were older. As for the soldiers - having done their 25 years they hoped/expected to retire as farmers. I suspect nutrition was a deal better in many parts of the world for much of historyu than it is now.Fainites barley 22:35, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

No evidence

"Growth hormones and male sex hormones (anabolics) like testosterone as well as the most important anabolic hormone, insulin (see: caloric restriction), that is released after eating, shorten the lifespan, possibly by upregulating metabolism and thus causing more oxidative stress. Eunuchs have a higher life expectany than men with testicles, yet they tend to be obese, which shortens their life. [7] "

There is no evidence in "7" for the last sentence of the paragraph, and no clear evidence for the first sentence but if anything more evidence for the reverse of what is stated. So I've had to delete that paragrapgh until someone can find any actual supporting evidence. More folk science presented as fact. 80.2.195.52 (talk) 22:20, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Gender Bias

The beginning of the section on gender differences in life expectancy reads as though it were written by someone with an ideological axe to grind. National health agencies devote particular attention to particular genders when health issues are gendered as is the case with breast cancer, prostate cancer, cervical cancer, fertility issues of different sources, complications of childbirth, etc. It just so happens that the more serious of these -- breast cancer and complications of childbirth, at the very least -- are female issues. The energy governments devote to these issues is, appropriately, proportional to their health and economic consequences. As for more energy being devoted to women's health generally, I believe just the opposite is the case. For instance, until recently the default baseline for human health was the adult male, so little or no energy was devoted to female-specific expressions of non-gender specific conditions such as heart disease.

I'm afraid I can't document this off hand and am rather lazy. I write all this as a white male with no special interest in or knowledge of the issue. I do have enough knowledge, however, to know that this section betrays an ideological bias and is inadequate as an impartial discussion of the state of the art. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DavidFHoughton (talk • contribs) 13:20, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

the male/female human life expectancy section has gone bad. It should state facts of life expectancy, not guesses as to the reasons for different life expectancy in males and females. An over time historical measurement would be good as well, as I believe in the past (western world) 1900's men and womens lifespans were averaged equal.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 16:03, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
I want to second MarkV1.0's notion that a description of historical trends in gender differences in life expectancy should be included/added. The author throws the discussion of this aside when he/she writes, "If one does not consider the many women who die while giving birth or in pregnancy." I am currently fact checking a professor of mine who claims that because of deaths in childbirth, female life expectancies were LOWER than those of males in the 1800's and 1700's. I suspect she is wrong, but would appreciate it if anyone could cite a reliable source on this topic. I will add it if I find one myself...not much luck so far. JWild28 (talk) 21:38, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, women in developed countries have slightly longer life expectancies than males. I'm not going to guess at reasons, but this has been documented. Idag (talk) 17:28, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
It is plainly a biased section and sticks out like a sore thumb. It may be that recent highlighting on some female conditions corrects decades (aeons?) of imbalance in the other direction. Fainites barley 15:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Greetings, the assumption that all things being equal, the life expectancies for males and females would be equal is a fallacious assumption. Women have biological advantages. For example, female mortality rates are lower among premature babies, and lower even in the womb. Females have a lower mortality rate from conception to cohort extinction. The underlying cause is biological, not bias.Ryoung122 13:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely. The WHO statistics show pretty clearly that where males and females have similar access to healthcare, food and so on, females are slightly over 50% of the population. I see you've edited the paragraph anyway. Fainites barley 15:30, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

There is something seriously wrong with the gender bias at least in the 'Life expectancy over the history' section. It states that European men have a life expectancy of 73 years while women have 125 yrs. The latter is of course totally off-based. I don't know too much about the topic, but the general consensus seems to be that women have 8-10 years longer life expectancy (and of course we rearly see a 100 year old lady, each of them is presented in the media). It actually might have been "12.5 years more [than man]" originally, which sounds sane. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.132.95.33 (talk) 01:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Gender differences

"Interestingly, the age of equalization (about 13) tends to be close to the age of menarche, suggesting a potential reproductive-equilibrium explanation. Women, whose reproductive cycle tends to result in regular blood loss, are better-able to cope with blood loss and trauma."

This material was added to the section on gender differences, removed because unsourced and not clear - author wanted to put it back, so moved here for discussion.

  • In addition to providing no WP:MEDRS, no basis/explanation is given for claim that women better-able to cope with blood loss and trauma - in what way, or physiological (rate of platelet/etc. production), what statistics/studies support this claim, etc.
  • The age of menarche has declined in recent years in more developed countries, it isn't clear that "about 13" is typical of humans in general over historical, much less over an evolutionarily relevant time period. Also, when was/is the age equalization at about age 13? (e.g., did the age of equalization track with the age of menarche).

So if these form part of a widely held opinion, needs clarification, and citations for verification. Zodon (talk) 18:19, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment: This is not about a "widely-held opinion." This is about science. Males tend to be born in higher numbers than females, resulting in a gender ratio of about 105:100. At age 13, the ratio is 100:100 (the age of equalization). It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint for the age of equalization to be around the time that humans begin reproducing. We are talking about the last 100,000 years here. Advances in science may have altered evolutionary trends, but it does not negate the reasons for them.Ryoung122 03:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
By widely held opinion I meant a "significant views that have been published by reliable sources."WP:NPOV If it is not a widely held opinion/significant view, then it doesn't belong in the article. (Sorry if that confused, I didn't remember the particular wording of the policy.)
This is about WP:verifiability, and WP:NOR. No source is given for these claims. As noted the claims are far from self evident and they are missing the detail/context necessary for Wikipedia to provide neutral coverage, and for a reader to understand and evaluate them.
It isn't particularly clear that the age of equalization would have anything to do with age of menarche. A population can be sustainable with far fewer breeding males than females. The assumption of lack of death from childbirths also makes the measure highly artificial (death in childbirth are a common limiter of female life expectancy before sanitary technique, etc.). (If you drop that assumption, men often lived longer than women.)
The claimed significance of age of parity also assumes no age difference in mating, that only one male mates with each female, etc. Lots of examples in history and anthropology, as well as examples from other mammals, where these conditions don't hold. (Older, more powerful, wealthier male having multiple breeding partners, etc.)
Until reliable sources are provided for this, these claims should not be in the article. When sources are provided, then needs more explanation/commentary to either make it clear, or to cover the weaknesses in the theory. Zodon (talk) 10:45, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Reversion of organizational changes

This edit reverted several organizational changes without explanation. The changes were explained in edit summaries in the preceding few edits - but to summarize: the section title change was per WP:MOSHEAD, the change from "genetic advantage" to "gender difference" was for neutrality (not clear that genetics is basis of differences, nor which/what is the advantage), the changes of order and wording were to help paragraph flow. All the statistics in the paragraph need citation (where and when do they apply to, etc.), hence the fact tag. Please explain reason for reverting those changes. Thank you. (Discussion of the other change that was reverted is in the section above.) Zodon (talk) 11:33, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment: I mass-reverted the article because the changes you made could not be undone individually. The change from "genetic advantage" to "genetic difference" is clearly ridiculous. If females live longer, that is an "advantage" from a numbers-standpoint. There really is no question here about that particular fact. Some people confuse "neutrality" with not being able to state a fact. Did Serena Williams win her match today? Yes she did. If I said that Serena is #1 in the world, is that a fact? Actually, it is.
Also, if you want to add "fact" tags, be my guest. However, I do believe that the changes I made significantly improved the section compared to what was there before, and you should give this time to amalgamate before blanket-undo's.
If females lived longer because they got in fewer motorcycle wrecks, smoked fewer cigarettes, and ate less hamburgers, then why do females outlive males in the womb? In the nursing home? In the preemie units at the hospital? Clearly, even when environmental factors are removed, females have a life expectancy advantage...one that is gradual, cumulative, and continual...females have a lower death rate at every age on the life insurance table. That can't be explained by environment.Ryoung122 03:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Of course my changes could be undone individually. You could re-insert the deleted material, if that was the part of the changes you were trying to undo. Just as I moved to the talk page just those sections of the material that I found most questionable as to verifiability and POV.
I did not make "blanket-undo's." Zodon (talk) 08:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
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