Surfed here due to the current discussions concerning changing Social Security in the USA. While I'll certainly lose out on any changes made (am a "baby boomer"), seems a fair way to (in part) resolve the problem of bankrupting Social Security is raise the retirement age to what would be relatively comparable to a new retiree in lets say 1940. I know they have already done this in part, but from what I've gleemed here, the average life expectency of someone in 1940 that was 65 compared to the average life expectency of someong in 2005 that is 65 is approximately 10% or 6 years. So someone who is currently 65 should have 6 more years of work ahead of them before they can retire with full Social Security benefits.

I expect this will not resolve the issue entirely, but at least it would provide a major dent in the financial crisis and come across as fair to most Americans. The reasons are statistics, not political. ______________________

So I am still a little bit unclear - how does one calculate Age-adjusted life expectancy? in the article on Life Expectancy, the process is very clearly described... can anybody out there make a similar contribuiton to this section? or is the process so similar that we should just have a link back to Life Expectancy. Would it be accurate to say that you simply use the life table (as described in the Life Expectancy article)? But isn't that still only looking at the past and present? Isn't that inaccurate measure? Is there a way of extrapolating the historical changes in Age-adjusted life expectancy to give one a more accurate estimate? Any actuarials out there? Thanks, Peter

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"For example, a population that has a raw life expectancy of 75 years may have an age-adjusted expectancy of 60 more years for a 25 year old person (surpassing the average), but only a 40-year future expectancy for a newborn"

Is that right? Isn't the expectany for a newborn the same as the raw life expectancy? Everybody lives to be 0, so everybody is included in the average. --Tango 23:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lets say, hypothetically that half the population dies at 20, and the other half dies at 90, and nobody dies any other time. the average life span would be 55, however, someone who is already 21 is guarenteed to live to 90, but someone who is 0 might die at 20, thus the expected total life span is longer for someone who is already old. Kaldosh 23:49, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the expected age for a 25 year old should be more than the raw expectancy, but the expectancy for a newborn should be exactly the raw expectancy, by definition. It shouldn't be less. In your example, a newborn baby expects to live to 55, not lower. --Tango 16:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Tango is correct. The original article hopelessly confused the calculation of life expectancy from age-specific death rates with the more intituive calculation of median age of death. Statistically, the two have very little to do with each other. I'll go ahead and change the article. Citynoise 01:50, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is a big problem with this entry. Namely, there is no such thing as "age-adjusted life expectancy". I don't know who created this entry, but they oviously did not understand the definition of life expectancy, which is the expected number of years left to be lived. What has been called here 'raw life expectancy' is actually called 'life expectancy at birth'. Any standard demography or actuarial science textbook would show this. The comments about mortality patterns contained in this entry are still useful but should be merged with the entry for life expectancy. The only information that should exist under this particular entry is a redirect to life expectancy with an explanation of the origin of the misconception. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 63.200.38.214 (talk • contribs).