Monday, February 11, 2008

creepy actuarial post

how much of a factor should mccain's age be? after seeing this post i began to wonder what the odds were that john mccain would survive to the end of his first term, or to the end of his second if he were reelected.

mccain would be 72 years old by inauguration day. using the social security actuarial tables this is what his odds look like:

odds of surviving (odds of dying) each year of the presidency:
first year: 96.5% (3.5%)
second year: 96.2% (3.8%)
third year: 95.9% (4.1%)
fourth year: 95.5% (4.5%)
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total odds of surviving (dying) by the end of his first term: 85.0% (15.0%)
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fifth year: 95.0% (5.0%)
sixth year: 94.5% (5.5%)
seventh year: 94.0% (6.0%)
eighth year: 93.5% (6.5%)
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total odds of surviving (dying) by the end of his second term: 67.1% (32.9%)
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in other words, there is approximately a one in three chance that mccain would not serve to the end of his second term.

of course, those are just statistics taken from the average man of his age, without taking into account any of the particulars of john mccain (e.g. whatever toll his time as a POW may have taken). nor does it take into account the health benefits and costs of being a sitting president. thus it doesn't take into account the better-than-average health care a president would get, nor does it take into account the added stress of the job. it also doesn't take into account the bubble of protection that surrounds a president (presidents, for example, are probably a lot less likely to die in a car crash than the average person), or the added dangers of being a president (the average person is not generally a target of assassination).

but all else being equal, there's roughly a one-in-three chance that an average guy of mccain's age wouldn't make it to 2017, when mccain's second term would be scheduled to end.

unless, of course, i screwed up the math somewhere. we can never rule that out.