Bush, McCain, and political life extension

Tag : life extension

Why did the men of yesteryear run for and win the presidencyearlier in life than today's politicians do? Because they had to.
As Nagourney and Tanenhaus point out, life expectancy at birth hasincreased since the 1800s and even since 1975. But that indexdoesn't fully capture the situation of the aspiring politician.Life expectancy at birth is heavily influenced by infant mortality,a factor that quickly disappears from the equation. The number thataffects politicians more directly is life expectancy at 20, 30, or40. Even then, life expectancy overstates their time horizon. Theability of modern medicine to keep you alive longer doesn'tguarantee that your extra years will be productive. A lot of whatwe do now is keep people alive past the point when they'refunctional.
Figures released last week by the National Center for Health Statistics show that life expectancy for an American boy born in 2006 was75.4. For a man who turned 30 that year, having survived earlydeath risks, remaining life expectancy was 47.2. For a man whoturned 40 that year, it was 37.9.
Look back at previous eras, and you'll see how significantly thesenumbers have changed. According to NCHS data (see Table 11), in 1900, a 30-year-old man could expect 34.8remaining years. By 1990, a 40-year-old man could expect 35.1remaining years. In other words, George W. Bush could screw arounduntil age 40 and still look forward to more remaining years thanTeddy Roosevelt could look forward to at 30. Roosevelt, sworn in at42, could expect about 26 more years of life. Bush, sworn in at 54,could expect almost the same.
Those figures represent total remaining life. The number of yearsyou can expect to be healthy or active is another matter. As HumanNature previously reported , a 2003 paper by economist Lorens Helmchen notes that for men bornbetween 1830 and 1845