expenses necessary in the creation of such earnings or income and less living and other incidental expenses.[31] The loss is not equivalent to the entire earnings of the deceased, but only such portion that he would have used to support his dependents or heirs. Hence, we deduct from his gross earnings the necessary expenses supposed to be used by the deceased for his own needs.[32] The Court explained in Villa Rey:   [(The award of damages for loss of earning capacity is)] concerned with the determination of losses or damages sustained by the private respondents, as dependents and intestate heirs of the deceased, and that said damages consist, not of the full amount of his earnings, but of the support they received or would have received from him had he not died in consequence of negligence of petitioners agent. In fixing the amount of that support, we must reckon with the necessary expenses of his own living, which should be deducted from his earnings. Thus, it has been consistently held that earning capacity, as an element of damages to ones estate for his death by wrongful act is necessarily his net earning capacity or his capacity to acquire money, less necessary expense for his own living. Stated otherwise, the amount recoverable is not the loss of entire earning, but rather the loss of that portion of the earnings which the beneficiary would have received. In other words, only net earnings, and not gross earnings are to be considered that is, the total of the earnings less expenses necessary in the creation of such earnings or income and less living and other incidental expenses.[33]     In computing the third factor, the necessary living expense, a survey of more recent jurisprudence shows that this Court consistently pegged the amount at 50% of the gross annual income.[34] We held in Smith Bell Dodwell Shipping Agency Corp. v. Borja,[35] that when there is no showing that the living expenses constituted the smaller percentage of the gross income, we fix the living expenses at half of the gross income.   Applying the aforestated jurisprudential guidelines in the computation of the amount of award for damages set out in Villa Rey, we now proceed to determiningMelquiades life expectancy, thus:   Life expectancy = 2 / 3 x [80 age of deceased at the time of death] 2 /3 x [80 56] 2 / 3 x [24]