Advances in medical technology and genetic research — not to mention the increasing number of people reaching age 100 — are not translating into marked jumps in overall life expectancy, according to researchers who have found a decline in longevity in countries where the population lives the longest.
“We need to recognize that there is a limit” and perhaps reevaluate assumptions about when people should retire and how much money they will need to live their lives, S. Jay argued. Olshansky, a researcher at the University of Illinois-Chicago and lead author of the study published Monday by the journal “Nature Aging.”
Mark Hayward, a researcher at the University of Texas who was not involved in the study, called it “a valuable contribution to the mortality literature.”
“We are reaching a plateau [dans l’espérance de vie]“, he agreed. It’s always possible that a breakthrough could push survival to greater heights, “but we don’t have one yet,” Mr. Hayward added.
What is life expectancy?
Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year can expect to live, assuming mortality rates remain constant at that time. It’s one of the world’s most important health metrics, but it’s also imperfect: It’s a snapshot estimate that can’t account for pandemics, miracle cures, or other unforeseen events that could kill or kill people. save millions of people.
In the new study, Olshansky and his research partners tracked life expectancy estimates for the years 1990 to 2019, taken from a database administered by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. The researchers focused on eight of the places in the world where people live the longest: Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland.
The United States is not in the top 40, but it was also included “because we live here” and because of earlier bold estimates that life expectancy in the United States could increase significantly over the of this century, Mr. Olshansky said.
Who lives the longest?
Women continue to live longer than men and life expectancy continues to improve, but at a slower rate, researchers found. In 1990, the average improvement was about 2 1/2 years per decade. In the 2010s, it was a year and a half, and almost zero in the United States.
The United States is more problematic, as it is hit harder by a range of early mortality problems, including drug problems, mass shootings, obesity and inequality that makes it difficult for some people to obtain sufficient medical care.
In their calculation, the researchers estimated what would happen in the nine countries if all deaths before age 50 were eliminated. The increase was only 1 1/2 years at best, Olshansky said.
Eileen Crimmins, an expert in gerontology at the University of Southern California, said in an email that she agreed with the study’s findings. She added: “For me, personally, the most important issue is the dismal and declining relative position of the United States.”
Why can’t life expectancy increase indefinitely?
The study suggests there is a limit to how long most people can live, and we’ve almost reached it, Olshansky said.
“We get less and less life from technologies that extend it. And the reason is that aging gets involved,” he summarized.
It may seem common to hear about someone living to be 100 — former U.S. President Jimmy Carter reached that milestone last week. In 2019, just over 2% of Americans reached 100, compared to about 5% in Japan and 9% in Hong Kong, Olshansky noted.
It is likely that the number of centenarians will increase in the coming decades according to experts, but this will be due to population growth. The percentage of centenarians will remain limited, with probably less than 15% of women and 5% of men achieving this in most countries, the researcher estimated.
