6 ms·

Twice as long – life expectancy around the world

65 points by okket 8y ago

juskrey 8y ago
Life expectancy at, say, age 25 would be much more interesting information. Expectancy at 0 years (that is plain average) gives only the information about children mortality.
- Nition 8y ago
  There are a couple more charts in that vein at one of the pages the post links to: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-by-age https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-ab...
  - John_KZ 8y ago
    If you look at life expectancy difference for teens and young adults, seems like the main difference between the 1800s and today is that instead of dying at your late 40s/50s you die in your 70s/80s, which is very intuitive to me at least. This is when regular visits to the doctor become important. I wouldn't be surprised if heart issues alone is the main driver of this trend.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  Even life expectancy at age 25 is mostly meaningless, actually. Women mortality (due to childbirth) took a significant toll on the average life expectancy as well. And another two significant scourges were famines and epidemics.
  - vasco 8y ago
    Well, if you take away all the mortality causes of the time you'll end up thinking things were pretty good back then, since people weren't dying in car crashes.
    - sacado2 8y ago
      Yep, but life expectancy is not a very intuitive concept. When they read "life expectancy was 25 years", many people tend to think a 30 year old was some kind of lucky but senile guy back then. Dying of old age was just not the norm.
      - Brockenstein 8y ago
        Dying of old age was a norm. There were plenty of old people way back when. It's just that lots of people dying young (well across all age groups) was the norm too.
  - juskrey 8y ago
    Actually women delivery mortality became horribly bad with the invention of maternity hospitals and before the invention of sanitation.
nlstitch 8y ago
These articles always frustrate the crap out of me as "life expectancy" isn't the right metric; While living longer we tend to be sick (both physical and mental) longer. Just think of the fact that we've seen an increase in the amount of "confused people" and even hotlines to report those; Getting overstimulated by shocking videos/news outlets on our phones, feeling ousted/depressed by seeing other people pretend to have happy lives on social media or seeing marketing from websites pretending its perfectly normal to play with each others feelings by having affairs.
- lox 8y ago
  Your comment is the perfect illustration of exactly the issues that you complain about. You make sweeping claims without citations that are meant to invoke a deep sense that despite data showing otherwise that life is getting worse. Consider that you are part of the problem.
  - chatterUptick 8y ago
    You can't neglect the toxicity of egotism flaunting status in the face of those without. It's a provocation potent enough to touch off wars. If you're tired of the usual punchng bags, then how about maybe the French Revolution being a less fatigued example. Your willful ignorance is just as easily part of the problem.
  - nlstitch 8y ago
    Ouch man; no need to make this personal. Thanks for agreeing with me though. Here you go; 14% increase of confused people (dutch) ; https://demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl/onderzoeken/verwarde-mensen https://demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl/onderzoeken/verwarde-mensen Living longer but sick longer; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/life-expectancy-average-healthy-the-lancet-diseases-when-will-i-die-a7349826.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/life-expectancy-a... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prepare-for-a-sick-old-age-twice-as-many-older-people-will-suffer-from-four-or-more-diseases-by-2035-2018-01-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prepare-for-a-sick-old-age... TED talk about children getting overstimulated by Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w
sureaboutthis 8y ago
It's a sobering fact that, when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
- adam12 8y ago
  For others who would like to know: Mozart died at 35. From Wikipedia: The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation. Some principal sources of contention are as follows. * Whether Mozart declined gradually, experiencing great fear and sadness, or whether he was fundamentally in good spirits toward the end of his life, then felled by a relatively sudden illness. The former hypothesis was accepted for most of the history of Mozart biography, but the latter has been advanced by contemporary scholars. * The actual cause of his death: whether it was from disease or poisoning. The poisoning hypothesis is widely discredited. If a particular disease was the actual cause of death, then it remains unknown; only plausible conjectures can be offered. * His funeral arrangements, and whether they were the normal procedures for his day, or if they were of a disrespectful nature. Modern scholarship generally supports the view that the funeral arrangements were normal for Mozart's time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Moza...
dannylandau 8y ago
An interesting graphic would be life expectancy in US per state, is there one?
- nervousvarun 8y ago
  Not sure about a graphic but this information is available in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
wjossey 8y ago
I went down a rabbit whole and eventually stumbled upon this small webpage documenting changes from 1900 to 2000. https://demography.cpc.unc.edu/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-of-death-1900-v-2010/ https://demography.cpc.unc.edu/2014/06/16/mortality-and-caus... I also pulled up car accident fatalities and found it interesting that we peaked in the 30s and 40s per capita in the US, despite the major investment of the highway system in the 50s which one could have presumed would have made it far worse given the combination of speed and lack of air bags. Then again, my anecdotal experience says that I know far more people killed or severely injured from country driving and small town DUI than highway driving. I wonder what the 2100 graph will say? Will that cancer chunk be eliminated or mostly scrunched down? Will we have figured out how to grow new hearts so we eliminate heart disease? Hope I live long enough to find out (I’d be 115).
- aaronbrethorst 8y ago
  Life expectancy is going to drop due to 150 million premature deaths from CO2 over the 21st century unless we can reduce CO2 emissions. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0108-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0108-y And this says nothing about the direct and indirect deaths from rising sea levels: famine, wars, pandemics, etc.
  - njarboe 8y ago
    Not a very honest paper title. "Quantified, localized health benefits of accelerated carbon dioxide emissions reductions". I lost a little more respect for Nature today. To call them premature deaths due to CO2 when they are really about other things that are emitted with the CO2 when burning fossil fuels, is deceptive. From the article abstract: "This generally reduces co-emissions that cause ambient air pollution, resulting in near-term, localized health benefits. We therefore examine the human health benefits of increasing 21st-century CO2 reductions by 180 GtC, an amount that would shift a ‘standard’ 2 °C scenario to 1.5 °C or could achieve 2 °C without negative emissions." I did not read the article but the abstract emphasizes the number of lives saved in Asia and Africa. It is probably the reduction in burning coal without any scrubbers that gives the large reduction in deaths. Reducing natural gas power generation in the US would likely reduce few deaths.
kmonsen 8y ago
This is really the story about the 99%, very rich people lived about as long in ancient times as they do now. Well, woman still died from giving birth. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancien... For the rest of us though, life has become better and healthier.
throwaway321339 8y ago
The worse figures are in colonies that Europeans plundered for a century or more (India and Africa). Sadly neither numbers nor suffering is sufficient to wipe the century old propaganda that their thievery was 'benign civilization'. Sad.
treya 8y ago
I've run across a number of not just anecdotal accounts of long longevity, good health and lack of disease in a number of different indigenous cultures. I get the uncomfortable feeling that we are persistently and myopically comparing ourselves to in terms of health and longevity (and happiness/satisfaction for that matter) to what has been essentially a pathological state of human existence in the newer civilizations of the last couple thousand years. And still in modern times the diseases of civilization are raging as hard as ever. For a good example, read the description of the Crow Indians in the last appendix of Journal of A Trapper: https://books.google.com/books?id=49HTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0 https://books.google.com/books?id=49HTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=fron...

65 points by okket 8y ago

Life expectancy at, say, age 25 would be much more interesting information. Expectancy at 0 years (that is plain average) gives only the information about children mortality.

Nition 8y ago
There are a couple more charts in that vein at one of the pages the post links to: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-by-age https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#it-is-not-only-ab...
- John_KZ 8y ago
  If you look at life expectancy difference for teens and young adults, seems like the main difference between the 1800s and today is that instead of dying at your late 40s/50s you die in your 70s/80s, which is very intuitive to me at least. This is when regular visits to the doctor become important. I wouldn't be surprised if heart issues alone is the main driver of this trend.
ddebernardy 8y ago
Even life expectancy at age 25 is mostly meaningless, actually. Women mortality (due to childbirth) took a significant toll on the average life expectancy as well. And another two significant scourges were famines and epidemics.
- vasco 8y ago
  Well, if you take away all the mortality causes of the time you'll end up thinking things were pretty good back then, since people weren't dying in car crashes.
  - sacado2 8y ago
    Yep, but life expectancy is not a very intuitive concept. When they read "life expectancy was 25 years", many people tend to think a 30 year old was some kind of lucky but senile guy back then. Dying of old age was just not the norm.
    - Brockenstein 8y ago
      Dying of old age was a norm. There were plenty of old people way back when. It's just that lots of people dying young (well across all age groups) was the norm too.
- juskrey 8y ago
  Actually women delivery mortality became horribly bad with the invention of maternity hospitals and before the invention of sanitation.

nlstitch 8y ago

These articles always frustrate the crap out of me as "life expectancy" isn't the right metric; While living longer we tend to be sick (both physical and mental) longer. Just think of the fact that we've seen an increase in the amount of "confused people" and even hotlines to report those; Getting overstimulated by shocking videos/news outlets on our phones, feeling ousted/depressed by seeing other people pretend to have happy lives on social media or seeing marketing from websites pretending its perfectly normal to play with each others feelings by having affairs.

lox 8y ago
Your comment is the perfect illustration of exactly the issues that you complain about. You make sweeping claims without citations that are meant to invoke a deep sense that despite data showing otherwise that life is getting worse. Consider that you are part of the problem.
- chatterUptick 8y ago
  You can't neglect the toxicity of egotism flaunting status in the face of those without. It's a provocation potent enough to touch off wars. If you're tired of the usual punchng bags, then how about maybe the French Revolution being a less fatigued example. Your willful ignorance is just as easily part of the problem.
- nlstitch 8y ago
  Ouch man; no need to make this personal. Thanks for agreeing with me though. Here you go; 14% increase of confused people (dutch) ; https://demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl/onderzoeken/verwarde-mensen https://demonitor.kro-ncrv.nl/onderzoeken/verwarde-mensen Living longer but sick longer; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/life-expectancy-average-healthy-the-lancet-diseases-when-will-i-die-a7349826.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/life-expectancy-a... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prepare-for-a-sick-old-age-twice-as-many-older-people-will-suffer-from-four-or-more-diseases-by-2035-2018-01-25 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prepare-for-a-sick-old-age... TED talk about children getting overstimulated by Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w

sureaboutthis 8y ago

It's a sobering fact that, when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

adam12 8y ago
For others who would like to know: Mozart died at 35. From Wikipedia: The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation. Some principal sources of contention are as follows. * Whether Mozart declined gradually, experiencing great fear and sadness, or whether he was fundamentally in good spirits toward the end of his life, then felled by a relatively sudden illness. The former hypothesis was accepted for most of the history of Mozart biography, but the latter has been advanced by contemporary scholars. * The actual cause of his death: whether it was from disease or poisoning. The poisoning hypothesis is widely discredited. If a particular disease was the actual cause of death, then it remains unknown; only plausible conjectures can be offered. * His funeral arrangements, and whether they were the normal procedures for his day, or if they were of a disrespectful nature. Modern scholarship generally supports the view that the funeral arrangements were normal for Mozart's time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Moza...

dannylandau 8y ago

An interesting graphic would be life expectancy in US per state, is there one?

nervousvarun 8y ago
Not sure about a graphic but this information is available in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

wjossey 8y ago

I went down a rabbit whole and eventually stumbled upon this small webpage documenting changes from 1900 to 2000. https://demography.cpc.unc.edu/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-of-death-1900-v-2010/ https://demography.cpc.unc.edu/2014/06/16/mortality-and-caus... I also pulled up car accident fatalities and found it interesting that we peaked in the 30s and 40s per capita in the US, despite the major investment of the highway system in the 50s which one could have presumed would have made it far worse given the combination of speed and lack of air bags. Then again, my anecdotal experience says that I know far more people killed or severely injured from country driving and small town DUI than highway driving. I wonder what the 2100 graph will say? Will that cancer chunk be eliminated or mostly scrunched down? Will we have figured out how to grow new hearts so we eliminate heart disease? Hope I live long enough to find out (I’d be 115).

aaronbrethorst 8y ago
Life expectancy is going to drop due to 150 million premature deaths from CO2 over the 21st century unless we can reduce CO2 emissions. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0108-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0108-y And this says nothing about the direct and indirect deaths from rising sea levels: famine, wars, pandemics, etc.
- njarboe 8y ago
  Not a very honest paper title. "Quantified, localized health benefits of accelerated carbon dioxide emissions reductions". I lost a little more respect for Nature today. To call them premature deaths due to CO2 when they are really about other things that are emitted with the CO2 when burning fossil fuels, is deceptive. From the article abstract: "This generally reduces co-emissions that cause ambient air pollution, resulting in near-term, localized health benefits. We therefore examine the human health benefits of increasing 21st-century CO2 reductions by 180 GtC, an amount that would shift a ‘standard’ 2 °C scenario to 1.5 °C or could achieve 2 °C without negative emissions." I did not read the article but the abstract emphasizes the number of lives saved in Asia and Africa. It is probably the reduction in burning coal without any scrubbers that gives the large reduction in deaths. Reducing natural gas power generation in the US would likely reduce few deaths.

kmonsen 8y ago

This is really the story about the 99%, very rich people lived about as long in ancient times as they do now. Well, woman still died from giving birth. http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancien... For the rest of us though, life has become better and healthier.

throwaway321339 8y ago

The worse figures are in colonies that Europeans plundered for a century or more (India and Africa). Sadly neither numbers nor suffering is sufficient to wipe the century old propaganda that their thievery was 'benign civilization'. Sad.

treya 8y ago

I've run across a number of not just anecdotal accounts of long longevity, good health and lack of disease in a number of different indigenous cultures. I get the uncomfortable feeling that we are persistently and myopically comparing ourselves to in terms of health and longevity (and happiness/satisfaction for that matter) to what has been essentially a pathological state of human existence in the newer civilizations of the last couple thousand years. And still in modern times the diseases of civilization are raging as hard as ever. For a good example, read the description of the Crow Indians in the last appendix of Journal of A Trapper: https://books.google.com/books?id=49HTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0 https://books.google.com/books?id=49HTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=fron...