The tables I mention below are fascinating, and I suspect generally highly reliable. Still, check out this table, and explain to me how anyone could possibly make remotely plausible projections about future rates of death. The projections about changing rates of death due to violence are particularly laughable — though we can probably predict that trauma care will keep improving, we have no idea how homicide will fluctuate. But even projections about death due to heart disease, cancer, and the like can’t possibly be right for more than a few years out; who knows what sort of medical care improvements we’ll see in the coming century? If anyone is relying on these projections, especially out to 2040 and the like, they’re living in a fantasy.
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