> OK, my use of the phrase "life expectancy" is probably wrong, what I 
> was calculating is how long it takes for a batch of 1000 people to
> die, and given just the death rates (which is all we had in the 
> quote above) this can be calculated given that the total population
> doesn't change very much.


This link from a long private email to James.

    http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbagg

You're going to have to guess at the rest of the contents :-)
_________________________________

Death rate per age and overall can be easily determined.
I was interested to see that for Lebanon children 12 and under are 
about 23% of the population.
This is around what you'd expect from my 100/L figure below.
ie 12/60 = 20%. Increased  infant and child mortality increases this 
somewhat.

Same site has detailed tables etc for most countries.

A stunning demonstration is the change in the age/percentage graph 
with advancing time. For my country this has traditionally been a 
slowly tapering curve but in the next two decades it is expected to 
invert in shape so that there are proportionately vastly more 'old 
people' per youngster than in decades past. This fact is well known 
and focused on at length by our retirement watchdogs but seeing the 
dynamic display here really brings it into focus.

FWIW, for a given population with AVERAGE length of life L the death 
rate is *about* 1000/L per 1000 per annum, or percent dying per year 
is about 100/L. This is skewed by abnormal events and the fact that 
people die at varying rates at various ages and this varies per 
country. ie lots of people dying very young will push the death rate 
and lower the average life expectancy.  A blip of similar size at a 
greater age would have a diffreent effect on life expectancy. eg a 
culture with young men/fast cars type deaths will produce a different 
result to countries with less such deaths but higher infant mortality.

Worst case, short of 100% nuking, some people always live. However, 
the more who die, the more likely they are to hate those who are 
responsioble AND those they deem responsible AND those who didn't help 
them AND those who they consider didn't help them AND ... . The actual 
merit of any given situation is, as ever, not relevant - it's the 
perceived merit that counts. Sometime one can influence perceived 
merit, sometimes not. If you try you may well fail. If you don't try 
you can't fail :-).



        Russell

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