Subjective life expectancy in the US: correspondence to actuarial estimates by age, sex and race

John Mirowsky

Social Science & Medicine, 1999, vol. 49, issue 7, 967-979

Abstract: This study maps the relationship between subjective and actuarial life expectancy in a 1995 national sample of 2037 Americans of ages 18-95. Subjective estimates parallel age-specific actuarial ones based on current age-specific mortality rates. However males expect to live about 3 years longer than the actuarial estimate and blacks expect to live about 6 years longer. The apparent optimism remains after adjusting for socioeconomic status and the signs and symptoms of good health. Contrary to economists' rational-expectations hypothesis, young adults do not adjust their life expectancies upward to account for the favorable trends in mortality rates.

Keywords: Life; expectancy; Subjective; health; Sex; Race; United; States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(99)00193-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:49:y:1999:i:7:p:967-979

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().