[jyl]

Originally Posted by red-beard

That is not how you calculate it. If you use median age of death, you need to use median age for life. Otherwise you are mixing apples and oranges.

78.6 is the Median life expectancy in the USA.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/life-expectancy.htm

78.6 is not the median life expectancy for people who are 74. You use the life expectancy for the cohort you are looking at. Otherwise you’d conclude that the median person of 79 years old is already dead.