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Number of deaths per year

business acumen
New answer on Aug 02, 2021
4 Answers
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Anonymous A asked on Aug 01, 2021

If we take average life expectancy as 80 and the number of people in US is 320 M..they calculate number of deaths every year as 320/80 (they assume every year 1/80 of the US pop is dying).,how did they land on 1/80 is dying?

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Sidi
Expert
replied on Aug 01, 2021
McKinsey Senior EM & BCG Consultant | Interviewer at McK & BCG for 7 years | Coached 350+ candidates secure MBB offers

Hi!

There are two underlying assumptions:

1. Population growth is flat

2. Age distribution is even across the 80 years (the number of people in each of the 80 age brackets is 1/80*320m)

With these two assumptions, 1/80 of the population is born every year and replaces 1/80 of the population that dies every year.

Cheers, Sidi

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Agrim
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Content Creator
replied on Aug 02, 2021
BCG Dubai Project Leader | Learn to think like a Consultant | Free personalised prep plan | 6+ years in Consulting

Its a statistical assumption - if people live for 80 years then 'statistically' every year 1/80th population has to die.

  • If less than 1/80th population dies - then some people would end up living longer than 80 years
  • If more than 1/80th population dies - then some people would live for much shorter
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Anonymous replied on Aug 02, 2021

As mentioned in the previous answer - usually fair assumptions during the cases (to be validated with the interviewer) are:

  1. population is evenly distributed so: 1/80 of pop is 1-yr old, another 1/80 is 2-yr old, etc., till 1/80 of the population is 80-yr old
  2. population is not growing: the population remain constant at 320M 

given that if the average life is 80 years, statistically you can imagine that when people turn 80 they die (an no one die earler or later) > 1/80 of the population is dying every year (replaced by the same amount of new born to keep the population constant)

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Ian
Expert
Content Creator
replied on Aug 02, 2021
#1 BCG coach | MBB | Tier 2 | Digital, Tech, Platinion | 100% personal success rate (8/8) | 95% candidate success rate

Hi there,

Very important for you to understand churn/replacement rate as market sizing!

If the average lifespan is 80 years, then every year you have a 1/80th chance of dying. If you have 80 people, one of those people will die every year.

Hence, dividing 320M by the % of people that die each year!

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Sidi gave the best answer

Sidi

McKinsey Senior EM & BCG Consultant | Interviewer at McK & BCG for 7 years | Coached 350+ candidates secure MBB offers
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