Actual lifespans versus estimated life expectancies

Updated 2018 02 19, to identify a serious error in a report published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a report on aspects of suicides in India.
Updated 2019 05 19, to add links to related articles.

Actual average lifespans in the United States began to decline in the year 2013 and were still falling in 2016.  Should one not have expected for that to have become front-page news in 2013 and to continue to  be front-page news?  Will President Trump help to make an improvement in that trend?  It is a worthwhile effort.  It seems to be far more valuable to improve the health of his nation than to try to make good on the failed promise by President Obama, who had assured the world in 2008 that he would bring real peace, fix the climate, and stop the rising of the oceans.

It is recommended that you look up information on lifespans for countries of interest, at the website of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (links for some countries are indicated farther down).  That is quite revealing and educational as to the impact of terror and of recent interventions in some of those nations.

Afghanistan is doing better now, but other countries not so much, while some countries no longer make much progress, even though they are at peace–internally–and are free from any outside interference to enjoy their wealth and health.

The history recorded by some sources does not necessarily give any indication why estimated average life expectancies do not take into account ongoing terror, or intervention by foreign powers.  Furthermore, it is not always clear or obvious why actual lifespans deviate (often substantially) from expected average life expectancies.  Moreover, those deviations are generally more likely to be in favor of actual lifespans and often substantially higher than what their estimates had been for a given year and country.

Here are excerpts for a few countries.  Click on the name or the image for each country to access more detail.

• Afghanistan

• Canada 

• Chad

• China

• Germany

• India

In examining some of the health indicators published by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, while looking for information on suicide data, I found a prominent report on the circumstances of suicides in India.  The report contains a serious error. It is anyone’s guess to what extent that error influenced the trend lines presented by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in the graph for Lifespans in India. Read more on that issue.

• Iraq

• Japan

A Wikipedia article states about the modern era of Japan that, “On March 11, 2011, Japan suffered one of the largest earthquakes in its recorded history; this triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, one of the worst disasters in the history of nuclear power.” More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan#Modern_era

Interestingly, although the tsunami that was the consequence of that earthquake killed a large number of people, the nuclear disaster that was a consequence of that tsunami killed none, and only two men involved in salvage operations needed short-term medical attention due to very mild radiation exposure that had caused a slight, temporary rash on their lower legs because they had been standing and working in radioactive water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear generating plant.

• Liberia

• Libya

• Russia

[Update 2018 03 26] Russia deserves a closer look.  Mortality rates are instructive (compared to those in selected nations and those of the world).

• Sweden

• Syria

• United States

---

Addendum

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is in error.  It publishes on its website an article that contains a statement that is not merely misleading but blatantly wrong:

»[Indian] Housewives accounted for the highest proportion of suicide deaths over the [2001-2010] decade.«

Source: Lessons from a decade of suicide surveillance in India: who, why, and how?
By Lalit Dandona, Amelia Bertozzi-Villa
Published in International Journal of Epidemiology, June 2016

That assertion is wrong.  There is no excuse for such a blatantly wrong assertion. The assertion is not supported by suicide data published over the years by India’s NCRB (National Crime Reports Bureau).

The NRCB suicide data persistently indicated over the years that in India,

• Husbands have always killed themselves in substantially higher numbers than did wives;
• The ratio of husband suicides, compared to wife suicides was 2.3 husbands for every wife who committed suicide in 2015;
• The ratio of husband to wife suicides has been growing over the years, and
• The rate of increase in the ratio of husband to wife suicides shows no sign of abating.

More (and links to NCRB sources for those points) in a blog posting demonstrating that India’s NCRB is lying with statistics (June 18, 2017).

Here, from those NCRB sources, is the pertinent data that corroborates the finding that Lalit Dandona and Amelia Bertozzi-Villa took a false claim by India’s NCRB at face value, without verifying by looking at the actual suicide data published by the NCRB, that the NCRB’s claim is accurate:

The NCRB’s claim is clearly wrong and contradicted by the very data it published over the years.  Just as many gullible and numerically illiterate journalists and social researchers did, Lalit Dandona, Amelia Bertozzi-Villa and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation fell for a cheap trick.

---

#Health #History #MensIssues

See also:

• Divorce causes population decline
• Missing Persons in the United States
• Baby Farmers: Women who kill children
• Opposition to immorality a criminal offence in Canada
• More Guns Less Crime