Humanity has reached the upper limit of life expectancy, according to a new study.
Advances in medical technology and genetic research — not to mention large numbers of people reaching the age of 100 — are not translating into noticeable jumps in average lifespan overall, according to researchers who found shrinking longevity in countries with the longest-lived populations.
S said. Jay Olshansky, a researcher at the University of Illinois-Chicago and lead author of “We have to realize 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. The study was published in the journal Nature Aging on Monday.
Mark Hayward, a researcher at the University of Texas who was not involved in the study, described the study as “a valuable addition to the literature on mortality.”
“We have reached a plateau” in life expectancy, he added. It’s always possible that some breakthrough could push survival to higher levels, “but we don’t have that right now,” Hayward said.
Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a child born in a given year is expected to live, assuming that death rates at that time are constant. It is one of the world’s most important health measures, but it is also imperfect: it is a momentary estimate that cannot take into account deadly epidemics, miracle cures, or other unexpected developments that could kill or save millions of people.
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In the new research, Olshansky and his research partners tracked life expectancy estimates for the years 1990 to 2019, derived from a database run by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. The researchers focused on eight places in the world where people live the longest: Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland.
The United States does not even rank among the top 40 countries. But they were also included “because we live here” and because of previous bold estimates that life expectancy in the United States could rise dramatically this century, Olshansky said.
The researchers found that women are still living longer than men, and improvements in life expectancy are still occurring, but at a slower pace. In 1990, the average amount of improvement was about two and a half years per decade. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the period was one and a half years, and almost zero in the United States
The United States is more problematic because it is hardest hit by a host of issues that kill people before they even reach old age, including drug overdoses, shootings, obesity, and inequality that makes it difficult for some people to get adequate medical care.
But in one calculation, the researchers estimated what would happen in all nine places if all deaths before age 50 were eliminated. At best, the increase was still only a year and a half, Olshansky said.
Eileen Crimmins, a gerontologist 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 bleak and declining relative position of the United States.”
Why life expectancy may not be able to rise forever
“The study suggests that there is a limit to how long most people can live, and we’ve almost reached it,” Olshansky said.
“We are squeezing less and less life out of these life-extending technologies. The reason is that aging gets in the way.
It may seem common to hear about someone living to be 100 years old, and former US President Jimmy Carter reached that milestone last week. In 2019, just over 2% of Americans reached 100, compared with about 5% in Japan and 9% in Hong Kong, Olshansky said.
Experts say the number of centenarians is likely to grow in the coming decades, but that’s because of population growth. The percentage of people who reach 100 will remain limited, with less than 15% of women and 5% of men likely making it that long in most countries, Olshansky said.
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