Well yeah, but the long tail of shitty health policy is coming home to roost. What kind of a health care impact do you think the recent criminalization of routine women's medical health procedures will have? (Hint - there are already women who are dying or having significant health impacts due to doctors delaying or outright refusing treatment out of fear of legal action in several states).

> You think maybe that big pandemic that killed a million people in the US had anything to do it?

I'm not making judgements, just stating the fact. You obviously seem to have it all figured out though.

I agree with this in general.

Living in the U.S., though, there are some real problems with the healthcare system that came to a head at the same time as (and partly due to) the pandemic.

I just find it interesting that an someone would make predictions about drastically higher life expectancy during a period where the trend isn't even directionally accurate.

The statement of TFA, which GP defends, is

> Today's 5-year-olds will likely live to 100

Notably missing from the sentence: "born in rich families" and "who don't fall into the trap of lifelong substance abuse".

> Life expectancy at birth isn't the best metric, since child mortality depresses the aggregate.

Child mortality in developed countries has become very low, in the US it's around 5.5 / 1000. As a result, total life expectancy doesn't differ much between birth and 5: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html

For men, LEB is 76.22, LE5 is 71.77 (so TLE5 of 76.77). For women, it's 81.28 and 76.76 (81.76).

That's a 6 month difference in TLE, probably not what'll make or break the nonsense that is "today's 5 years olds will reach 100".

> As a quick example: in the US in 2020 and 2021, the life expectancy at birth was 76–77, but the life expectancy for 65 year-olds was 83–84: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm

The article is about 5 years old, not 65 years old. Those are basically worlds apart: for obvious reasons, the older you get the more chances you have to keep living, because you've yet to die.

Per the above actuarial tables, men's TLE65 is 83, TLE83 is 89.91. But between the two the cohort drops from 80000 to 42000.

TLE89 is 93.45 but the cohort is down to 22000. TLE93 is 96.29, but 10500 remain. And you can keep going, the actuarial table's life expectancy never reaches 0. Yet the probability of a survivor (out of 100000) does, quite a long way before the end of the table.