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Comment by hyperbovine | Hacker News Reader

Is 65 considered young? Honest question. He was born during the Truman administration...

The US male average life expectancy is around 77. That includes early deaths of low income people with poor access to health care, very obese people, teenage drivers. In fact an average US male who reaches the age of 65 is likely to live until 84.3 (1). 65 seems like an early age to die for someone with a social/financial status of a major city mayor.

(1) https://www.ssa.gov/planners/lifeexpectancy.html

> In fact an average US male who reaches the age of 65 is likely to live until 84.3 (1).

Pretty much everyone dies early if you look at their life expectancy at their last birthday.

Indeed. As a male in the US if you make it to 75 you'll live about 11 more years on average. Interestingly though that's only a four year improvement over where it was at in 1900. I think it implies most of those people are pushing the edge of average genetic longevity and that medical tech has struggled to do much for non-super longevity people once you're over that general ~75 threshold. That is, my opinion is the overwhelming majority of the the factor/s that get you from 75 to 100 or more, are genetic (and if you don't have super longevity genes, almost nothing will get you to ~100).

No, not young, I do agree with that. The average life expectancy for a 65 year old is 84, so in that sense, Ed Lee died 20 years before you'd expect him to. A healthy 65 year old (which is what Ed Lee appeared to be as far as I know) has a lot of life left, and an energetic and involved man like Lee still had a lot left to do.[1]

http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/index.ssf/2014/10/us_li...

[1] intended as a general expression of sympathy and sadness, in no way do I wish to imply your question suggested anything otherwise!

That was after WW2. Kirk Douglas just turned 101, he was born 36 years earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirk_Douglas

The average age of death for a US male is 78, which isn't particularly old. Move to Canada and you get a few more years. :-)

> The average age of death for a US male is 78

No, you've confused life expectancy at birth with average age of death; that is, males who are born today are, on average, expected to live to around 78; when Ed Lee was born, that number was a little over 65.

You completely overlooked why it was 65. As I explained to your other comment:

"Yeah, in 1950 you could die from polio. Half the male population smoked. No seatbelts in cars, ... No treatments for cancer, heart disease... There were a lot of factors. "

Why it was 65 doesn't really matter; if you are going to use life expectancy at birth to gauge whether a death is premature, the only sane figure is life expectancy at the birth of the person in question, not life expectancy at birth for people of the same gender in the year they died. (Unless they died the same year they were born, which is uncontroversially premature.)

(It also doesn't make sense to use life expectancy at @current-age in the year they died, at least if you are trying to portray “premature” death as something other than a near universal norm.)

"if you are going to use life expectancy at birth ..."

Who said you should use this as a gauge? That included lots of coal miners who were dying of black lung, etc.

One value isn't a very good indicator. By state and race varies greatly, for example.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_ex...

The current life expectancy of an Asian American in California is 86 years old.

> Who said you should use this as a gauge?

Implicitly, all the people in this thread—including you—pointing to the current US male life expectancy at birth.

I just say that if you are going to use life expectancy at birth, at least use one applicable to the birth of the person in question.

Yeah, as I already explained twice why the life expectancy at birth in 1950, would not apply. That number includes a lot of premature deaths that no longer apply.

Ideally, you’d apply a conditional probability.

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/768215/conditional-...

If you go to the Social Security site, for example, you can calculate your life expectancy.

https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/longevity.cgi

For a male born on Dec 1, 1952, your current life expectancy is 84 years old.

not young but most would consider it premature death. Average life expectancy in US is over 75

> Average life expectancy in US is over 75

Life expectancy at birth for males in the US is 75+ (80+ for females) now. In 1950, for males, life expectancy at birth was 65.6 years.

https://www.infoplease.com/life-expectancy-birth-race-and-se...

Yeah, in 1950 you could die from polio. Half the male population smoked. No seatbelts in cars, ... No treatments for cancer, heart disease...

There were a lot of factors.

Alas, not all of us can expect to live to an above-average age.

Yeah, young is probably the wrong choice of words on my part. "Premature" would have been better.

> Is 65 considered young? Honest question. He was born during the Truman administration...

I used to think 65 was old. Then I turned 50, and it suddenly seemed kind of young.

-- Born in the last 2 weeks of the Kennedy administration.

The life expectancy for someone who in 2014 was 62 years old (like him) was another 20 years. So it is definitely young.

Source: SSA.

Select the right base time for each individual (easy to do after they die), and everyone dies prematurely by this standard.

Not really, 10+ years before the average life expectancy and 17 years before the life expectancy of 3 years ago is definitely young.

Yeah, there are degrees of early. I think it's fair to say this one is meaningfully early, rather than a statistical slight of hand.

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