The study analysed five European countries as well as Australia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and the US. The dramatic gains in life expectancy seen over the last two centuries are slowing, according to a new study. Advances in medical technology and genetic research, not to mention larger numbers of people making it to age 100, are not translating into marked jumps in lifespan overall, according to researchers who found shrinking longevity increases in countries with the longest-living populations.
“We have to recognise there’s a limit” and perhaps reassess assumptions about when people should retire and how much money they’ll need to live out their lives, said S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois-Chicago researcher who was lead author of published on Monday in the journal Nature Aging. Mark Hayward, a University of Texas researcher not involved in the study, called it “a valuable addition to the mortality literature”.
“We are reaching a plateau” in life expectancy, Hayward said, and while it’s always possible some breakthrough could push survival to greater heights, we don’t have that now”. Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, assuming death rates at that time hold constant. It is one of the world’s most important health measures, but it is also imperfect: It is a snapshot estimate that cannot account for deadly pandemics, miracle cures, or other unforeseen development.