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The Pink Cross Foundation, an anti-porn organisation, which seems to use this analysis by Rev. Daniel R. Jennings as a reference, calculated the average life expectancy of a porn performer as being 36.2 years, as compared to that of an American at 78.6 years, but I'm not sure these numbers are trustworthy.

Is this true?

It seems likely that the sources are biased, but I couldn't find any reputable sites saying otherwise.

Laurel
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akbox
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    [Welcome to Skeptics!](http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users) Nice question. – Oddthinking Jun 14 '15 at 01:17
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    Have fun trying to control for lifestyle issues unrelated to acting in sexually explicit films. Popular media and alleged "tell all" books suggest that many (most?) people in the industry partake of other high risk activities. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Jun 14 '15 at 01:54
  • OK, before we proceed further: the claim has selection bias. Showing that it does not answer the question. Any answer to the question needs to have an estimate of both life expediencies at the very least. Of course, as @dmckee notes, there could still be confounding factors which need to be taken into account. – Sklivvz Jun 15 '15 at 16:00
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    **A kind, but firm, reminder**: Please do not post tentative answers in the comments. Comments are meant to improve the question and not answer it. – Sklivvz Jun 15 '15 at 16:02
  • @Sklivvz Given the same claim, if the OP had asked, "Is this, as claimed, evidence that average life expectancy etc.?" then would an answer like "No because there's selection bias" have been on-topic? – ChrisW Jun 15 '15 at 18:18
  • From the analysis: "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that he shall also reap." What is God's punishment for faking statistics? Clear violation of the ninth commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour". – gnasher729 May 04 '21 at 15:57
  • As discovered by @Laurel, this post caused some [controversy](https://www.xbiz.com/news/258918/fscs-mike-stabile-helps-debunk-google-disinformation-about-adult-performer-life-expectancy). – Oddthinking May 05 '21 at 01:31
  • There was a similar post about police officers. Apparently they are three times more likely to die on the job than your average employee - but that has little influence on the live expectancy. I’d expect a police officer to have better health care than the average person in the USA, and the average police officer reaching retirement age should be fitter than the average office worker. And indeed it turned out they had slightly higher life expectancy than the average person. – gnasher729 May 05 '21 at 09:56
  • Link to the "police officers" story: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8623/do-police-officers-and-firefighters-have-a-shorter-than-average-life-expectancy?rq=1 – gnasher729 May 06 '21 at 13:43
  • @dmckee---ex-moderatorkitten Of course, the question is if you can call the lifestyle issues unrelated if almost all of the population exhibits them. (In other words, if I tossed a coin on becoming a porn star or a waiter, would the chance of me having those other issues really be independent of the result of the coin toss?) Also neither the claim nor the question ask for causation; they ask for correlation. – sgf May 17 '21 at 12:31

2 Answers2

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The average life expectancy for a porn star cannot be calculated with the data from Jennings.

The analysis by Jennings states:

when the death ages of these porn stars were averaged

He has simply calculated the average age at death of those unfortunate 129 persons and presented it as the "average life expectancy of people working in the porn industry."

This is an error in statistical sampling. Life expectancy is not the average age at death of a subset of a group that has died. According to the Wikipedia article on the subject,

life expectancy is a statistical measure of the average time an organism is expected to live, based on the year of their birth, their current age and other demographic factors including gender.

Incorrectly calling the average age at death (37.43 years) the "life expectancy" gives a very misleading and pessimistic picture.

Moreover, the article ignored the lifespan of the large number of persons who might have worked in the porn industry for many or a few years before retiring or moving on to other occupations.

In short, the figures probably show selection bias, as also pointed out in some early comments on the question.

Laurel
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English Student
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    Since porn, as the full-fledged, in the open industry that it is has only been around for a few decades, that probably skews things a bit. I wonder if, say, someone who is 65 and a former porn star, but is still alive is included in the statistics, since we don't have their age at death, yet. Still, in addition to AIDS, it's had something of a history of being a high-risk, exploitative industry with a lot of crossover into criminal behavior and drug use/abuse, as well, so a lower life expectancy is not all that shocking, IMO, even if the data points might wind up being a bit unreliable. – PoloHoleSet Jan 12 '18 at 14:46
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    We are mainly concerned with the figure of 37 years @PoloHoleSet. People in civil war regions have an average life expectancy of 45-60 in this day and age. The porn industry has its risks but 37 years seems such a low expectation. As I said, *the people now working in the porn industry are unlikely to lead riskier lives than race car drivers, gangsters, rock stars and law enforcement officials, if not exactly the general population!* Did I forget to mention ***movie stars?*** Quite a few actresses committed suicide in my home nation. – English Student Jan 12 '18 at 14:50
  • I understand that. I was agreeing that there are probably a number of factors that make nailing down that number and saying "it's 37" a bit premature and problematic. I'm not sure if you thought my comment was refuting something you said, but I was just thinking "aloud" about different factors that might play into this. I'm not sure I agree on your relative risk assessment compared to other professions, though, but that's something probably better suited for chat. – PoloHoleSet Jan 12 '18 at 15:00
  • Your points are well taken. And porn has its risks for sure. There are many professions that are riskier than the general population, is what I meant @PoloHoleSet. How can porn stars have a drastically lower life expectancy compared to all other groups? If someone had pegged that life expectancy at 45+ it might have sounded a more likely figure. Tens of thousands of people work in porn and maybe a few might die early every year. Factors like extreme competitiveness and depression have led to suicide among Indian film actresses but nobody questions the average life expectancy of our film stars! – English Student Jan 12 '18 at 15:07
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    Most of this answer seems your own speculation, but we only allow facts to be posted as answers. – Sklivvz Jan 12 '18 at 20:38
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    Thanks for pointing out @Sklivvz. Original data may be lacking in this particular case (unless someone has conducted a proper and detailed study on life expectancy of porn stars) but I was trying to logically demonstrate how a too-low claim of average life expectancy 37 years seems to have been made on the basis of faulty statistical logic. However I shall try to find suppporting references. – English Student Jan 13 '18 at 06:29
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    Now edited answer to add something I missed originally: I later found it explicitly stated in that article that *"When the death ages of these porn stars were averaged it was discovered that the average life expectancy of a porn star is only 37.43 years whereas the average life expectancy of an American is 78.1 years."* This is an obvious error of logic because average life expectancy is not at all the average age at death. I have already supported this with a link to the Wikipedia article on the topic. That should be sufficient proof of the fallacy of this claim @Sklivvz. – English Student Jan 13 '18 at 07:04
  • Also removed substantial paragraphs that cannot be supported with adequate references @Sklivvz. – English Student Jan 13 '18 at 07:15
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    Using this method, one of the most dangerous jobs would be choir boy; their life expectancy must be around 12. It's really ridiculous to calculate the average age of death of a predominantly young industry, and to ignore those that age out. Based on this, I think you are still giving too much credit to the number ('at best a historical figure', 'honest but obvious error', etc). I don't know what the actual number is, but what we can say is that it isn't 37. I think referencing the original source is enough to show this, though you might want to focus your answer a bit on that. – tim Jan 13 '18 at 09:03
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    The sample size from the source is also ridiculously small. Just looking at the [wikipedia list of porn actresses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pornographic_actresses_by_decade), they are missing almost all actresses from the 70s, most of which are either still alive or lived well into their 60s or 70s. – tim Jan 13 '18 at 09:04
  • I just looked at the latest version (version 30), and it is still making unreferenced claims. It should probably have large portions - especially the bits that try to logically demonstrate an argument without corresponding evidence to support it - edited out, to focus on the key points that have references. – Oddthinking Jan 13 '18 at 12:19
  • Edited further to remove more "bits that try to logically demonstrate an argument without corresponding evidence to support it" -- if you find and point out any remaining statements that need references I ahsll either provide them or remive the statements @Oddthinking. I am not familiar with the expectations of Skeptics.SE so your feedback to improve my answer is much appreciated. – English Student Jan 13 '18 at 12:38
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    So by their logic, children have a life expectancy way below 18 years because all who die as children die at early age? – Hagen von Eitzen Jan 14 '18 at 16:23
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    Yes indeed that is the fallacy I tried to point out @Hagen von Eitzen. – English Student Jan 14 '18 at 20:21
  • Many thanks for the expert editing hand @Oddthinking. – English Student Jan 14 '18 at 20:22
  • That 65 year old former porn star will likely _never_ appear in the statistics, because by the time they die, nobody will remember they were ever a porn star. – gnasher729 May 04 '21 at 15:52
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    The data also contains many cases of people dying from AIDS in the mid 90s to early 2000s - since the question was @the life expectancy is…” and not “life expectancy was…” these cases would be quite irrelevant today. – gnasher729 May 07 '21 at 08:46
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To supplement the @English Student answer:

If one collects and averages the ages at the time of death of professional soccer players, the result will be more or less the same.

The peculiarities of the professional soccer, as well as the human biology, imply that most players retire from soccer at age below 40, a lot of them - well below 40.

Those who had the bad luck to die while being an active player cannot average higher, but they are in no way representative for all the people that once played in a professional team. Pele is still alive in his ~80s, isn't he?

Porn actors may have the numbers slightly different, but the underlying math about the carrer limitations (as well as their biology roots) is the same.

fraxinus
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