Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2002 19:37:06 -0500
From: Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: lifespan of Presidents, and feeling old
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

ronkean at juno.com wrote:

> On Tue, 2 Apr 2002 15:56:53 -0500 "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
> writes:
> >         Actually, Presidents of the United States tend to die about 5
> > years
> > before their actuarial peers owing to the stress of the job.  As
> > John
> > Kennedy said, "When it comes to nuclear policy, I have to be right
> > 100% of
> > the time."
> >
>
> The observation about stress is a good point, but I think there is more
> to it.  Throughout most of history, people of wealth and high status
> tended to live much longer than the average person (again, discounting
> accidents, murder, duelling, etc.), presumably because they ate better
> and had more comfortable living conditions and better medical care.  This
> was true up to about 1900, though since about 1900 the overall average
> lifespan has tended to equalize with the average lifespan of rich and
> powerful individuals.  So, in the early history of the U.S., prominent
> individuals probably averaged much longer lives than the average person.
> Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, who lived into their eighties (I
> think) would be examples.  Surely the average American died much younger
> than that in those times.  That's what I had in mind when I opined that
> presidents live longer.

You are confusing actual lifespans -- which have not changed appreciably
since Biblical times -- with *life expectancies* which averaged in early
childhood deaths to create an abnormally low life expectancy of maybe 35 or
45.   But while childhood disease wiped out a lot of people the survivors to
adulthood were likely to die of either an accident (like being thrown by a
horse) or old age.  Many of my family ancestors lived into their 80s and 90s
-- and my mother will celebrate her 94th birthday this August despite having
taken little advantage of Modern Medicine.

--Ted White