if people were following my calculations starting from partway through they would arrive at the same answers
If this is motivated by desire for trustworthiness, linking to the source of the life expectancy figures should have higher priority. (Also, how did you calculate the average? Weighed by overall population of those countries, population under ten, number of AMF clients, simply averaging the four numbers, … ?)
I’ll edit the post to use life expectancy figures from ten years ago.
If you used the ten years old data, you would most probably obtain lower expected age at death for today’s ten-years olds* than for today’s newborns. But it should be higher. The problem is not that the life expectancy changes during the time. The problem is that the life expectancy at birth is average of life times of all people born, while the life expectancy at age of ten is average of life times* of all people that survived until this age. The latter is higher than the former, since all children who died before their tenth birthday (and who lower the former average) are excluded from the statistics. In e.g. Zambia, about 11% of children die before age of five, so you can imagine how this influences the discussed difference. (I was unable to quickly find data for this to illustrate the difference explicitly.)
* Note that life expectancy at age x usually means the expected remaining time of life, not the expected age of death (which obviously is obtained from the former by adding x).
I simply averaged the four numbers on those countries. I’ll edit the post to have a weighted average by number of nets distributed.
I don’t know how to account for disproportionate early deaths in my calculations, since I don’t have data on the typical lifespan of, for instance, a Zambian who survives childhood.
Just to be clear: I am not objecting that your numbers are imprecise. Your argument doesn’t require precision. I have objected to incompatible levels of precision involved in the presentation: rough guesses and systematic errors of order 10% or more (some of them unavoidable) on the one hand and five-decimal figures on the other hand.
If this is motivated by desire for trustworthiness, linking to the source of the life expectancy figures should have higher priority. (Also, how did you calculate the average? Weighed by overall population of those countries, population under ten, number of AMF clients, simply averaging the four numbers, … ?)
If you used the ten years old data, you would most probably obtain lower expected age at death for today’s ten-years olds* than for today’s newborns. But it should be higher. The problem is not that the life expectancy changes during the time. The problem is that the life expectancy at birth is average of life times of all people born, while the life expectancy at age of ten is average of life times* of all people that survived until this age. The latter is higher than the former, since all children who died before their tenth birthday (and who lower the former average) are excluded from the statistics. In e.g. Zambia, about 11% of children die before age of five, so you can imagine how this influences the discussed difference. (I was unable to quickly find data for this to illustrate the difference explicitly.)
* Note that life expectancy at age x usually means the expected remaining time of life, not the expected age of death (which obviously is obtained from the former by adding x).
(Edited.)
I simply averaged the four numbers on those countries. I’ll edit the post to have a weighted average by number of nets distributed. I don’t know how to account for disproportionate early deaths in my calculations, since I don’t have data on the typical lifespan of, for instance, a Zambian who survives childhood.
Just to be clear: I am not objecting that your numbers are imprecise. Your argument doesn’t require precision. I have objected to incompatible levels of precision involved in the presentation: rough guesses and systematic errors of order 10% or more (some of them unavoidable) on the one hand and five-decimal figures on the other hand.