The increase in life expectancy in rich countries slows down: Why the breakthrough lasted 30 years
The increase in life expectancy in rich countries slows down: Why the breakthrough lasted 30 years
Set the excitement about the growing number of people that are expected to be 100 years old. The increase in human life expectancy could actually slow down. This is the result of a study that has analyzed mortality data from ten countries or regions over the past three decades 1 .
"There are limits how far we can push human survival," says the co -author of the study, S. Jay Olhansky, epidemiologist at the University of Illinois in Chicago. "If you live long enough, you come across the biological aging process."
he argues that the era of radical life extension is over. However, some researchers do not agree and point out that medical science may find a way to expand the age limits.
Progress in public health and medicine in the twentieth century have increased life expectancy by about three years per decade. However, Olshansky and others have long argued that this improved trend has not been sustainable, despite optimistic forecasts that predicted that most of the children born in the 21st century could be 100 years or older 2 . However, it is difficult to confirm this because the only way to find out this is to wait until enough people die or not.
Olshansky and his colleagues published the idea for the first time in 1990 3 that there is a finite border of human life expectancy. "We waited 30 years to test this," he says. "And we now have final evidence that the hypothesis of a limited lifespan is correct."
This evidence is based on the number of reported deaths in parts of the world with the currently highest life expectations, including Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Australia, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, the USA and Spain. The analysis looked at the period from 1990 to 2019 to avoid the distorting effects of Covid-19 pandemic.
The team found that the rate of improving life expectancy in the decade from 2010 to 2019 dropped below the level from 1990 to 2000. People still live longer, but not that strong anymore. In fact, the increase in life expectancy has slowed down to less than two years per decade in every population.
Overall, the study showed that children who have been born since 2010 have relatively low chances to be 100 years old (5.1 % chance for women and 1.8 % chance for men). The most likely cohort that will experience a full century are women in Hong Kong with a probability of 12.8 %.
can we overcome aging?
It is clear that a further extension of the average lifespan is difficult, as this would require solutions to diseases that affect the elderly, says Dmitri JDanov, demograph at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. JDANOV and his colleague Domantas Jasilionis wrote an accompanying comment on work. Both articles are published in Nature Aging today.
However,Jdanov thinks that Olhansky is too pessimistic about possible progress. "Although another jump could be difficult, the quick development of new technologies could lead to an unexpected health revolution," he says.
A few researchers would have thought that child mortality could be significantly reduced, he says. Advances in the areas of vaccines, education and public health have since reduced less than 4 % from more than 20 % in 1950.
"If we cannot imagine something, it does not mean that it is impossible," says Jdanov.
The study also revealed what Olhansky calls a "shocking" decline in average life expectancy in the United States in the decade from 2010 - a trend that has only been observed in such a long -living population after extreme events, such as wars. The decline in the USA is caused by the increasing mortality rate due to diseases such as diabetes and heart diseases in people aged around 40 to 60 years.
"It shows that something very negative happens under certain population groups that pulls the average down, because the wealthier and better trained subgroups actually cut off better," says Olhansky.
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Olshansky, S. J., Willcox, B. J., Demetrius, L. & Beltrán-Sánchez, H. Nature Aging https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-024-00702-3 (2024).
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Christensen, K., Doblhammer, G., Rau, R. & Vaupel, J.V. Lancet 374, 1196–1208 (2009).
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Olshansky, S. J., Carnes, B. A. & Cassel, C. Science 250, 634–640 (1990).