Longevity Continues to Climb Steadily

Today, residents of developed nations around the world now live in good health as much as a decade longer than their parents did. James Vaupel, from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), suggests that this phenomenon is because they are staying healthy to a more advanced age. Dr. Vaupel observed that over the past 170 years, in the countries with the highest life expectancies, the average life span has grown at a rate of 2.5 years per decade, or about 6 hours per day. Further, he notes that while the chance of death goes up with age up until the most advanced ages, after age 110, the chance of death does not increase further.  Commenting that “death is being delayed because people are reaching old age in better health,” Dr. Vaupel suggests that it also may be time to rethink how we structure our lives, in that the life trajectory is impacted by more time for careers, parenting, and leisure.