Subjective life expectancy in the US: correspondence to actuarial estimates by age, sex and race.

This study maps the relationship between subjective and actuarial life expectancy in a 1995 national sample of 2037 Americans of ages 18-95. Subjective estimates parallel age-specific actuarial ones based on current age-specific mortality rates. However males expect to live about 3 years longer than the actuarial estimate and blacks expect to live about 6 years longer. The apparent optimism remains after adjusting for socioeconomic status and the signs and symptoms of good health. Contrary to economists' rational-expectations hypothesis, young adults do not adjust their life expectancies upward to account for the favorable trends in mortality rates.

[1]  L. Verbrugge,et al.  From sneezes to adieux: stages of health for American men and women. , 1986, Social science & medicine.

[2]  Richard Breen,et al.  Regression Models: Censored, Sample Selected, or Truncated Data , 1996 .

[3]  R. Robbins.  Objective and Subjective Factors in Estimating Life Expectancy , 1988, Psychological reports.

[4]  P. Handal.  The relationship between subjective life expectancy, death anxiety and general anxiety. , 1969, Journal of clinical psychology.

[5]  J. A. Martin,et al.  ADVANCE REPORT OF FINAL NATALITY STATISTIC, 1992 , 1994 .

[6]  M. Lovell,et al.  Tests of the Rational Expectations Hypothesis , 1986 .

[7]  I. McDowell,et al.  Measuring health: A guide to rating scales and questionnaires, 3rd ed. , 2006 .

[8]  Christopher Winship,et al.  Models for Sample Selection Bias , 1992 .

[9]  J. Honnold,et al.  Socialization and demographic determinants of mortality expectations , 1980 .

[10]  Subhash C. Ray,et al.  Selection biases in sociological data , 1982 .

[11]  John R. Weeks,et al.  Population: An Introduction to Concepts and Issues , 1978 .

[12]  S. Z. Nagi.  An epidemiology of disability among adults in the United States. , 1976, The Milbank Memorial Fund quarterly. Health and society.

[13]  J. Goyder,et al.  The Silent Minority: Nonrespondents on Sample Surveys. , 1989 .

[14]  C. Bird,et al.  Sex stratification and health lifestyle: consequences for men's and women's perceived health. , 1994, Journal of health and social behavior.

[15]  Michael D. Hurd,et al.  Evaluation of the Subjective Probabilities of Survival in the Health and Retirement Study , 1995 .

[16]  D. Commerce.  Statistical abstract of the United States , 1978 .

[17]  Does perception of life expectancy reflect health knowledge? , 1983, American journal of public health.

[18]  Happiness, Time Consciousness, and Subjective Life Expectancy , 1992, Perceptual and motor skills.

[19]  Richard L. Pollock,et al.  An Empirical Window on Rational Expectations Formation , 1992 .

[20]  D. Hamermesh,et al.  Expectations, Life Expectancy, and Economic Behavior , 1985 .

[21]  R. Groves.  Theories and Methods of Telephone Surveys , 1990 .

[22]  J. Heckman.  Sample selection bias as a specification error , 1979 .

[23]  Christopher Winship,et al.  Sampling Weights and Regression Analysis , 1994 .

[24]  Joseph Waksberg,et al.  Sampling Methods for Random Digit Dialing , 1978 .