Ticking away
The moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours
In an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground
In your hometown
Waiting for someone
Or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
You keep calling it a “die off” because you’re being visually tricked by the misleading population pyramid. Use the actuarial tables instead.
Among 65 year old men, the probability of surviving to 75 is 76%. The probability of surviving to 85 is 39%. The probability of surviving to 95 is 5.9%.
For women, the odds are 84%, 52%, and 12% of getting to 75/85/95, respectively.
Yes, these are higher death rates than at younger ages. But nowhere near what the shape of the population pyramid suggests, where the 85 age cohort is about 1/4 as large as the 65, which misleadingly suggests a probability of 25% of living 20 more years, when the real number is closer to 45%.