>Here is a link showing that the average U.S. life expectancy for babies born in 2004 is 77.9.
>
>http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/08/13/life.expectancy.ap/index.html
>
>However, you can see from these charts from the CDC that once a person gets to be 65 or 75, they will on average live into their 80s. So the overall stat is skewed by early deaths.
>
>http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus06.pdf#027

Which has actually been the case for a long time. Back when the life expectancy was 35 or 40, it was skewed tremendously by the number of babies who died. If you made it to 5 or so, your life expectancy was pretty good.

Tamar