I've got how long? Life expectancy hits new high

Life expectancy has hit a new high, with typical newborn girls now expected to live to 84.5 and boys to 80.4, up from 83.3 and 78.5 a decade ago.

New life tables from the Bureau of Statistics show a typical 30-year-old woman can expect another 55 years, with a further 36 years for a 50-year-old, 18 for a 70-year-old, and 2.4 for a typical 100-year-old.

For men, a typical 30-year-old will get another 51 years, with 32 years for a 50-year-old, 15.6 for a 70-year-old, and 2.2 for a typical 100-year-old.

Men at the traditional retirement age of 65 have another 19.5 years. Fifty years ago in 1966, they had only 12 years. Women at 65 have another 22.3 years. Fifty years ago they had 15.7.

The Australian Capital Territory has the highest life expectancy of 85.3 for newborn girls and 81.2 for boys, followed by Victoria at 84.7 and 81.1. The Northern Territory has the lowest, of 78.5 for girls and 75.7 for boys. Tasmania is the second lowest at 82.8 and 78.9. 

Indigenous life expectancies at birth are 9.5 years lower for girls and  10.6 years lower for boys.

But the reality is less grim. Academic demographers believe the ABS figures are almost certainly underestimates.

Peter McDonald, of the University of Melbourne, says they assume no improvements over the course of a life.

"They are not any individual's lifetime; they are just telling you the expectation of life you would get if life expectancy didn't change," he said. "And for the last 200 years it has been going up."

The ABS itself says the figures it quotes for life expectancies at birth are the average number of years that a group of newborn babies would be expected to live "if current death rates remain unchanged".

Professor McDonald said a rule of thumb was that improvements over an 85 or 81 year life would add anther four  years. That means a typical newborn girl might live to 88 and a typical boy to 85, unless improvements stop or accelerate.

In The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

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Relax. Early retirement won't kill you

Even if financially it's not so good

It’s known as “quit and die” - the belief that men who retire early die sooner. And it is said to be backed up by evidence.

In one often-cited but rarely-seen study the Shell Corporation is said to found that its employees who retired at 55 were nearly twice as likely to die in the next decade as those who kept working.

But evidence of a solid link has been hard to find, in part because ill health is one of the reasons people retire early.

Now Australia’s Centre of Excellence in Population Aging Research believes its cracked the puzzle.

In new research released Tuesday it says there is no such effect. Men who retire early are no more likely to die at any age than those who stay working.

The lead Australian author John Piggott had to get around what he called “confounding influences”.

“Some people retire early because they are ill. Six months later they die. But they didn’t die because they retired early,” he says.

“Some people retire early because their firm has shut down. They are demoralised and depressed, they face financial stress and their social networks break down. But they didn’t necessarily die early because they retired early, it might have been because of the way it happened.”

Professor Piggott and researchers from Norway took advantage of an usual “natural experiment”...

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In 1989 Norway introduced an early retirement program that covered some firms and not others. Around half its private sector employers steadily cut the minimum age for access to retirement benefits from 67 to 62. The others did not. Many years on the data shows no statistically significant difference in death rates up to the age of 70.

“It means you can leave work without worrying about losing years; do whatever works for you,” Professor Piggott says.

For the government the implications are that it too needn’t worry about hastening death by encouraging people to work longer.

“If it were firmly established that working longer led to an earlier death policy makers would feel kind of mean,” he says.

Professor Piggott supports delaying the age at which Australians can gain access to tax-free superannuation, but not because of any concern about lifespan.

“Many people retire at 60, get $400,000 tax-free and then three years down the track have only $160,000 and need to get back into the workforce. That’s extraordinarily difficult at age 63, and they can’t get the pension. I would lift the age for access to tax-free super in line with increases in the age for access to the pension,” he says.

Professor Piggott served on the Henry Tax Review.

In The Sydney Morning Herald


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Google does something really good.

Rarely has one single decision done so much good.

From now on when you type in the word "suicide" you get this:

That's right. The Lifeline Australia phone number comes up first. No link, just the number 13 11 14.

Google has done the same with the word "poisoning".



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Dying. It's less likely.

We are less likely to die than ever before. Official figures released Wednesday show Australia's "standardised death rate" adjusted for age has almost halved over the past two decades from 9.1 deaths per 1000 to 5.7 deaths.

Merely assuming that death rate continues the Bureau of Statistics says a boy born today can expect to live an average of 79.3 years, and a girl 83.9 years. Should deaths continue to slide there's every chance a girl born this year will live into the 22nd century.

The Bureau says at the end of last year 1120 Australians were aged 100 and over, the fourth consecutive year the total has exceeded 1000. Over the past two decades male life expectancy has climbed 6 years and female life expectancy 4 years. Anyone who is 100 or over has on average 2.5 to 2.7 years left to live.

Indigenous Australians are far more likely to die than other Australians at any time in their lives.... Indigenous Australians aged under 25 are twice as likely to die, those 25 to 34 four times as likely to die, and those aged 35 to 44 five times as likely to die. Indigenous Australians aged over 65 are only one-third more likely to die than other Australains of the same age.

Published in today's Age


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