Want to know when you are going to die? If you are a North Carolinian, you may be immortal.
In my practice handling automobile accident personal injury claims, workers’ compensation claims, and the like, I have had to deal with the NC Mortality Table very often. This disturbing bit of legislative clairvoyance is an attempt to codify your life expectancy. Want to know when you’re going to die? Read on! Turns out you might not have anything to worry about at all…
Sometimes in practicing personal injury and workers’ compensation law, we have to make a determination as to how long someone might live in order to calculate the value of certain aspects of injury and workers’ comp claims. In order to make sure everyone is playing from the same sheet music, our wise legislature has enacted NCGS 8-46. This little gem of a statute tells us the life expectancy of someone depending on their age, in North Carolina. I haven’t researched how they came about these calculations, where they got their data, or if they are reasonably accurate in their predictions. But that’s not the point of this little blurb. The point is to play with it and see what interesting little tid bits you might glean from it. To use it, just look at the age on the left, and the age to the right of it is how many more years a person of that age to the left might have left. The statute is below, and some interesting thoughts are below that:
8-46. Mortality tables as evidence.
Whenever it is necessary to establish the expectancy of continued life of any person from any period of the person’s life, whether the person is living at the time or not, the table hereto appended shall be received in all courts and by all persons having power to determine litigation, as evidence, with other evidence as to the health, constitution and habits of the person, of such expectancy represented by the figures in the columns headed by the words “completed age” and “expectation” respectively:
Completed Age Expectation
0 75.8
1 75.4
2 74.5
3 73.5
4 72.5
5 71.6
6 70.6
7 69.6
8 68.6
9 67.6
10 66.6
11 65.6
12 64.6
13 63.7
14 62.7
15 61.7
16 60.7
17 59.8
18 58.8
19 57.9
20 56.9
21 56.0
22 55.1
23 54.1
24 53.2
25 52.2
26 51.3
27 50.4
28 49.4
29 48.5
30 47.5
31 46.6
32 45.7
33 44.7
34 43.8
35 42.9
36 42.0
37 41.0
38 40.1
39 39.2
40 38.3
41 37.4
42 36.5
43 35.6
44 34.7
45 33.8
46 32.9
47 32.0
48 31.1
49 30.2
50 29.3
51 28.5
52 27.6
53 26.8
54 25.9
55 25.1
56 24.3
57 23.5
58 22.7
59 21.9
60 21.1
61 20.4
62 19.7
63 18.9
64 18.2
65 17.5
66 16.8
67 16.1
68 15.5
69 14.8
70 14.2
71 13.5
72 12.9
73 12.3
74 11.7
75 11.2
76 10.6
77 10.0
78 9.5
79 9.0
80 8.5
81 8.0
82 7.5
83 7.1
84 6.6
85 and over 6.6
So what does that tell you? Here’s what it tells me:
When you are born, you can expect to live 75.8 years. Could be worse!
When you hit one, your expectancy increases by about a year, so that’s good to know. It’s probably because your older siblings will have a harder time killing you by accident now.
At 18 you can vote, and you can likely look forward to 58.8 years of stupid people voting and ruining your attempts to make good government a reality. Congratulations.
Worried about being more likely to die when you are 21 and can drink legally? Don’t be! According to this, you actually get another year added on to your life expectancy! You might live to 77 now! So keep drinking. It must be good for you.
At 25 you have 52.2 more years of car rentals ahead of you. Just remember, if you wouldn’t stomp a package of honey mustard sauce into your own car, you shouldn’t do it in a rental.
At 30 you still have over 47 years of your life to live! So don’t panic. Yet.
At 39 you have 39.2 years left. Halfway through is nothing! You’ve still got plenty of time. Keep telling yourself that.
When you are 40, you officially have permission to be depressed. Only 38.3 years left, so more than half of your life is over. Buy yourself a Porsche.
After that it’s pretty much all just depressing. When it really gets scary is at 77 when you only have 10 years left. Shivers.
But turn that frown upside down! At 85 and over, you have 6.6 years left. You’re 90? You have 6.6 years left! You’re 102? You have 6.6 years left! So no matter what happens, you can always tell yourself, “Prostate, schmostate! My legislature says I still have 6.6 years left, so I’m golden!” No worries! You apparently will live forever (or at least 6.6 years more) once you reach 85.
I love those guys. North Carolinians are immortal by legislative decree! I don’t think even the Roman Senate could do that. Way to go General Assembly!
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