Computing years of lost life: why actuaries really need to be able to do counterfactual reasoning
wherearethenumbers.substack.com
Hugh Osmond recently put out this interesting twitter thread: Although the average age of death in the UK is around 82, if a person reaches 82 then on average (i.e. without knowing any details of the particular person) the person can expect to live about another 8 years. We know the average age of a person dying from Covid is also 82, so it seems reasonable to assume that a typical person dying from Covid loses 8 life years. But, as Hugh points out, this reasoning is flawed. Hugh provides what is essentially an informal argument. In what follows we provide a formal explanation.
Computing years of lost life: why actuaries really need to be able to do counterfactual reasoning
Computing years of lost life: why actuaries…
Computing years of lost life: why actuaries really need to be able to do counterfactual reasoning
Hugh Osmond recently put out this interesting twitter thread: Although the average age of death in the UK is around 82, if a person reaches 82 then on average (i.e. without knowing any details of the particular person) the person can expect to live about another 8 years. We know the average age of a person dying from Covid is also 82, so it seems reasonable to assume that a typical person dying from Covid loses 8 life years. But, as Hugh points out, this reasoning is flawed. Hugh provides what is essentially an informal argument. In what follows we provide a formal explanation.