• @jet@hackertalks.com
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    216 days ago

    Life expectancy in 1875 in the USA was 39.41 years.

    This is true, but this is the mean. This includes everybody who dies in childhood. If you made it to 10 years old you are likely to live until 60.

    https://www.infoplease.com/us/health-statistics/life-expectancy-age-1850-2011

    This is exactly why the office of the President requires a minimum age of 35. It wasn’t because they were going to die in 4 years, it was because they had the expectation they had lived for a lot longer.

    • @pulsewidth@lemmy.world
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      115 days ago

      Why would we rule out all the kids under 10 from the life expectancy stat? To skew it older just to make it seem like people lived longer back in 1875? We don’t do that with life expectancy stats now, the life expectancy for 2020 is 78.81 and yes that includes anyone unfortunate enough to die as a child or infant. It also doesn’t mean that anyone who is 74 will be dead in ~4 years, it’s an average - which is helpful when talking about large demographics (which we are).

      Wtf does the president have to do with anything lol. They only pick presidents over 35 “because they had the expectation they had lived for a lot longer”. So… They expect that people who are older than 35 have lived longer than those who are under 35? Um yes that is how the passage of time works.

      I’m not sure how this helps the discussion.