The average US life expectancy for men is 75, but data suggests that McCain will live for a decade longer, writes Noel Whelan.
LAST MONDAY, I attended a lecture by one of this country's leading actuaries on the use of actuarial evidence in litigation. I couldn't resist getting his views on the US election.
Now that John McCain has secured the Republican nomination, current poll data indicates at least a 50/50 chance that the US is about to elect its oldest ever president. McCain was born on August 29th, 1936. If he wins, he will be 72 at his inauguration next January - two years older than Ronald Reagan was when he first took up presidential office.
Life expectancy is something that actuaries pay attention to and it is now emerging as a significant factor in the US presidential race. Macabre discussions about the likelihood of McCain dying in office or even before the November election have sprung up on blogs and even occasionally in the mainstream media.
McCain's life expectancy is relevant for two reasons. Firstly, the fact that he is older leads many to assume that he is more likely to die in office.
In a political system where the vice-president is automatically promoted to the top job for the remainder of the term, this makes McCain's choice of vice-president particularly interesting.
There are good reasons why McCain may wish to choose a youthful running mate - especially if he faces a Democratic ticket led by a 46-year-old Obama - but concerns about his age may instead prompt McCain to choose someone whom voters would be comfortable seeing succeed him should he die in office.
Secondly, McCain's age raises questions about whether he would seek re-election in four years' time. McCain himself, in a move that suggests he is conscious of concerns about his age, has said that if elected he might serve only one term.
The actuary enjoyed this conundrum and set out some of the variables applicable to the McCain scenario.
He warned against simplistic assumptions about older people being likely to die soon. Many bloggers have suggested that since the average US male life expectancy is about 75, McCain would be on borrowed time before he finishes his first term.
However, the current life expectancy of the average US male is irrelevant. It refers to life expectancy from birth rather than the life expectancy of someone like McCain who has made it to 71. As an American man born in the 1930s, McCain has survived the Korean War and the Vietnam War, has not been killed by cancer, heart disease or in a road accident and has managed to avoid most of the causes of mortality for men of his generation.
He spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, but my actuary discounted this as a factor. Although his Vietnam experience has left McCain with a serious arm injury, his survival suggests that it has had little impact on his general health.
On the contrary, the actuary suggested that since McCain's experience in captivity did not kill him, it may actually have lengthened his life since it spared him the excesses many young males experience in their 30s.
More controversially, the actuary suggested that enduring but surviving years of near starvation could have been a cleansing experience - akin to a rebirth of the body in middle age.
The actuary then accessed tables on life expectancy - a kind of ready-reckoner setting out, on the basis of historical demographic statistics, how much longer people of a certain age will, on average, live. He said that current Irish actuarial tables suggest that a 71-year-old man will probably live to at least 81. Apparently, updated actuarial tables to be published shortly will add two years or so to that figure.
Another variable in McCain's favour is the fact that his parents lived relatively long lives. His father, John Sydney McCain, was 70 when he died and more importantly, his mother, Roberta Wright McCain, is still hale and hearty at 96. He repeatedly tells stories of his mother's recent exploits as a counterfoil to the suggestion that at 71 he might not be up to the job of president.
Given his income bracket, he can also access the best healthcare in the world. If McCain is elected, he will have a personal medical corps devoted to ensuring his survival and is likely to have weekly if not daily check-ups, all of which would offset the health impact of the stress that goes with the job of commander in chief.
All in all, the actuary's conclusion was that one would assign a life expectancy to McCain of between 14 to 15 years, suggesting he will live to 85 or 86.
Having arrived at that figure, one can then generate probabilities on other scenarios that could impact on the presidential race. The probability of McCain dying during his first term is about one in seven and at some point in a two-term presidency about one in four. One can dismiss the Republican doomsday scenario of McCain dying before November, since there is apparently only a 0.03 per cent that will happen.