Life expectancy in the U.S. is 78.6 years, but Americans who
reach age 65 are living longer than ever.
It’s a question I’ve
asked myself more times than I’d like to admit: how many years do I have left?
According to
the CDC,
life expectancy in the U.S. is 78.6 years, and Americans who reach age 65
are living longer
than ever. However, older adults in cities and on the coasts are
living longer than people in rural areas. And that gap has been widening for
the last two decades.
In this simple
interactive graphic, Nathan Yau of Flowing Data predicts how long a person of
any age is going to live. They used Social Security Administration data to
simulate your possible lifetimes. (Head over to his site and enter your age and see for
yourself.)
After letting the
projections run for a while, a 58-year-old male has a 25% chance of living
30-39 more years, and a 40% chance of living 20-29 more years. There’s a 33%
chance he’d live 0-19 more years, and a 2% chance of making it to age 98. I
like those odds (but would still take the under).
When you push the
slider past 70, something interesting happens. “Life expectancy increases and
the balls tend to drop farther past the overall life expectancy point,” said Yau.
“That is, as you shift into later years, life is like, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good
at this aging game. Better than most. You’re probably going to live longer than
the average person.'”
Obviously it’s
important to note that these projections don’t take into account any one
person’s current health conditions or history, mobility, socio-economic status
or geographic location. It’s showing the wide range of outcomes. For me, it was
a calming exercise. Until I started to wonder how 98-year-old me would be able
to stay occupied. (There’s always something to worry about, I guess.)
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