To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 06:44:19 -0500
Subject: [WSFA] Re: lifespan of Presidents
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Tue, 02 Apr 2002 19:37:06 -0500 Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
writes:

> 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.
>

I appreciate that there is a difference between lifespan, which is a
characteristic of a species, and life expectancy at birth, which is a
statistical projection which includes the effect of infant and childhood
mortality, accident, murder, suicide, etc.  I agree that average life
expectancy at birth has become much longer in the modern era, largely
because of big decreases in infant and childhood mortality.  And the
Bible does mention a lifespan of three score and ten, and four score with
strength.

The youngest president took office at 43, and the average age of assuming
the presidency may be somewhere between 50 and 60.  So, when you said
that the average President lives 5 years less than their 'actuarial
peers', you presumably meant that their peers were those Americans of the
same age and sex at the time they assumed the presidency, rather than
those Americans who were born in the same year they were born.  That is
also what I meant by their 'peers', but failed to make clear.  My
reasoning was that presidents eat better and are better protected than
their peers of the same age, and so should be expected to live longer.
But, if the fact is that presidents die 5 years younger than their peers,
I can't argue with that fact.

Ron Kean

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