Personal Injury Law

New Life Expectancy Tables

By Bruce Stern

For many people with acquired traumatic brain injury, an adequate life care plan is essential. In personal injury cases, where the value of a life care plan is part of the damages, an essential ingredient is the life expectancy of the individual. In New Jersey and many other states, the Courts utilize a gender, race and ethnic neutral life expectancy, utilizing one life expectancy table regardless of gender or race.

Most recently “New government researches found large and growing disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.”

As reported in Sunday’s New York Times, researchers from the Department of Health and Human Services looked at life expectancy, among many other factors, using census data on education, income, poverty and housing to name but a few of the factors looked at.

This finding was similar to a study conducted by Ellen R. Meara, a health economist at Harvard Medical School who reported that in the 1980s and 1990s “virtually all gains in life expectancy occurred among highly-educated groups.” This was also similar to a Center for Disease Control and Prevention report in February documenting those with higher levels of education and income were much more likely to receive cardiac rehabilitation care than those with lower education and less income.

Since life expectancy represents only the average (50th percentile) life expectancy of Americans, half the population will live longer than the average life expectancy tables. This will have a profound effect in cases where attorneys representing those with acquired traumatic brain injury fail to adequately alert a jury of this potential result.

Full post as published by Traumatic Brain Injury Law Blog on March 25, 2008 (boomark / email).