If you care about the proof that article implies, here's what Snopes says about it:
The change in the estimate of life expectancy presented here stems from the fact that its prediction a year earlier was based on what looked to be — but turned out not to be — a trend toward increasing improvements in mortality rates across the country. The change reported in this new study results from tempering that earlier projection. However, life expectancies are still expected to rise across the board, just at a slower rate than was predicted in 2015.
In other words, it was predicted that life expectancies would increase more than they did, so the new estimates reflect a more accurate prediction that life expectancies will continue to increase, but at a lower rate than was previously predicted.
Does this correction mean anything to you?
I'm going to have to class that one as questionable, even though it is Snopes.
There are several different "life expectancy" numbers that float around out there. The specific one that just dropped this year is allegedly pegged to the mortality statistics for the previous year. Which is also why it is sometime referred to as "Life Expectancy at the time of birth" because that was, on average, how old people were already living to be when you were born.
But this goes back to lies, damned lies, and statistics. The "Life Expectancy" number is a statistic, and as such, it can be interpreted, and generated, by a wide range of various means.
The really fun one is checking your life expectancy against how old you already are, if/when you can find that number.
In an odd twist, the older you get, the higher the number generally becomes(ignoring any personal medical issues, speaking of the demographic as a whole), which obviously isn't to say you will actually live to see that ever rising number. Because it gets really simple, due to infant mortality rates, and childhood illness, your odds of living to be 70(life expectancy) once you turn 10 is much higher than your odds were when you were born. Because you managed to live through the maladies of infancy and early childhood. Likewise, your numbers improve as a 20 year old, because you survived adolescence. Living to see 30 would see another upward tick, as you're still alive. 40 will see it go up yet again, as will every decade mark there after. Ie. Someone who already is 85 years old right now has a much better (statistical) chance of living to see 90 than a 20 year old does. Simply because everything that could kill that 20 year old in the intervening 65 years didn't kill the 85 year old.
But to frame this in a more historical context: There is the notorious claim that the average life expectancy way back when was in the low 30's. Even though plenty of people were living to be much older than that(with plenty of 60, 70, 80, and even 90 year-olds being recorded). The reason for the low life expectancy number was due to the high risk of an early death due to other factors. In particular during infancy and childhood. So while a newborn may have had a life expectancy in the low 30's, someone who actually lived to see their 30's, even way back in history, had great odds of making it into their 60's or beyond. It just happens that the particular effect in question isn't quite so pronounced now today.
