I think you’ll find these correlations in just about any major high status population. If you find becoming a head of state too difficult, you can just try becoming rich instead.
Actually, the true lesson is probably to give up smoking. Here’s the table of correlations in the bottom quartile of income.
If I understand it correctly, the data in Bezzi’s post proves a correlation and then infers a causation. I agree that common cause makes more sense than the implied causal relationship because “US president” is both high-status yet also very stressful.
There is one aspect of being president which is definitely causal: assassination risk. 4⁄46 US presidents have been assassinated.
The last President born after 1895 was JFK, but since he was assassinated I’ll exclude him from the statistics…. Did I just throw at you the Chinese Robber fallacy by cherry-picking a lot?
Excluding assassinations (which have killed 9% of all US presidents so far) from the statistics constitutes cherry-picking.
Good point. But even including JFK the data does not change that much, we’re still left with ~40% dead heads of state who died after 90. I’ve edited footnote 4.
Anyway, I didn’t want to imply a causation. I don’t literally believe that the mere fact of being President can magically increase your lifespan. But the correlation is very strong, these people probably don’t spend a lot of time doing exercise, and yet they seem to outlive top tennis players on average.
I agree with Matthew Barnett that no one is particularly surprised to find that rich people live longer than poor people, but is this really enough to wipe off the President Effect? If I’m reading it correctly, Barnett’s chart says 87.5 years as life expectancy at age 40 for top 1% income men. In my list there are only 6 women, so let’s exclude them and compare the rest with our average rich man who die at 87.5.
Of our 96 heads of state, 45 are alive (7 of them are already older than 87.5). Of the other 51, I’ve counted 27 men died before 87.5 (this time I’m counting also JFK and the Macedonian guy died in a plane crash). This would left us with ~47% of dead people (24 men) who reached 87.5 before dying, consistently with the chart. 22 of those 24 men also reached age 90; this seems slightly better than the expected percentage from Gompertz Extrapolation reported in figure B, but maybe is just noise.
Anyway, the study only considers the interval 2001-2014 in the US, but a good half of the heads of state were already dead in year 2001 (and they were obviously not in the US). I am not really sure how this can be taken into account.
I think you’ll find these correlations in just about any major high status population. If you find becoming a head of state too difficult, you can just try becoming rich instead.
Actually, the true lesson is probably to give up smoking. Here’s the table of correlations in the bottom quartile of income.
If I understand it correctly, the data in Bezzi’s post proves a correlation and then infers a causation. I agree that common cause makes more sense than the implied causal relationship because “US president” is both high-status yet also very stressful.
There is one aspect of being president which is definitely causal: assassination risk. 4⁄46 US presidents have been assassinated.
Excluding assassinations (which have killed 9% of all US presidents so far) from the statistics constitutes cherry-picking.
Good point. But even including JFK the data does not change that much, we’re still left with ~40% dead heads of state who died after 90. I’ve edited footnote 4.
Anyway, I didn’t want to imply a causation. I don’t literally believe that the mere fact of being President can magically increase your lifespan. But the correlation is very strong, these people probably don’t spend a lot of time doing exercise, and yet they seem to outlive top tennis players on average.
I agree with Matthew Barnett that no one is particularly surprised to find that rich people live longer than poor people, but is this really enough to wipe off the President Effect? If I’m reading it correctly, Barnett’s chart says 87.5 years as life expectancy at age 40 for top 1% income men. In my list there are only 6 women, so let’s exclude them and compare the rest with our average rich man who die at 87.5.
Of our 96 heads of state, 45 are alive (7 of them are already older than 87.5). Of the other 51, I’ve counted 27 men died before 87.5 (this time I’m counting also JFK and the Macedonian guy died in a plane crash). This would left us with ~47% of dead people (24 men) who reached 87.5 before dying, consistently with the chart. 22 of those 24 men also reached age 90; this seems slightly better than the expected percentage from Gompertz Extrapolation reported in figure B, but maybe is just noise.
Anyway, the study only considers the interval 2001-2014 in the US, but a good half of the heads of state were already dead in year 2001 (and they were obviously not in the US). I am not really sure how this can be taken into account.