To: TimF who wrote (65003 ) 5/10/2008 6:42:33 PM From: DanD Read Replies (2) | Respond to I think the relative numbers for each country would be similar or the same blogs.wsj.com Also, the authors didn’t directly adjust for these deaths. Instead, Dr. Ohsfeldt and Dr. Schneider performed a statistical calculation, called a regression, to estimate how much mortality rates from homicide, suicide and accident influenced mortality, on average, from 1980-1999 in 29 of the 30 developed countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (they skipped tiny Luxembourg). Then they adjusted life-expectancy stats to get a rough handle on what life expectancy would have been like had the rates of these deaths been the same in all 29 countries. Their result: The U.S. would have ranked first, at 76.9 years of life expectancy — an increase of 1.6 years. Meanwhile, Japan fell from 78.7 years to 76 years, indicating it had been benefiting inordinately from low rates of accidental deaths and homicides. (You can see a partial list at this blog.) Prof. Ohsfeldt acknowledges that regression was chosen for its relative simplicity for what he called his “little book project.” And he agrees that some deaths that his book attempted to remove from the life-expectancy tables might be dependent on health-care systems. “We’re not trying to say that these are the precisely correct life-expectancy estimates,”
