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> Every generation lives longer than the one that came before—nothing new there No, that's completely wrong and this is a lie that keeps being repeated. Life e

> Every generation lives longer than the one that came before—nothing new there No, that's completely wrong and this is a lie that keeps being repeated. Life expectancy has only been increasing because child mortality has decreased to almost zero. The upper end has not shifted much at all.

Aeolun 3y ago
Are we talking about the top 5% or the top 0.01%? Because it seems to me the top 5% is definitely going up. I don’t think people regularly aged to 8x in the 1500s (mostly due to higher prevalence of disease).
woodruffw 3y ago
In most models, falling child mortality is responsible for about half of the life expectancy growth in the past 150 years. But the other half is indeed longer lives at all age groups[1]. So I don’t think this is a lie, or even misleading (since the author made no claim about non-childhood causes being disproportionate). [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit...
buzzy_hacker 3y ago
“It’s not just about child mortality, life expectancy increased at all ages” https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit...
foundart 3y ago
Where do you get that information? I realize that the reduction of infant mortality has been a major factor in the change in expected lifespan, but there have also been gains in expected remaining lifespan at 65. For example, this study reported on in 2018: The researchers looked at birth and death data for people above age 65 from 1960-2010. They found that the average age of death in those who live to be older than 65 increased by three years in every 25-year period, which means that people can expect to live about six years longer than their grandparents, on average. Furthermore, this trend continued at a relatively stable pace over the entire 50-year period and in all 20 countries that they analyzed. Factors like medical breakthroughs caused minor fluctuations in how quickly lifespans increased, but these variations averaged out over time https://news.stanford.edu/2018/11/06/lifespan-increasing-people-live-65/ https://news.stanford.edu/2018/11/06/lifespan-increasing-peo...
jodrellblank 3y ago
No that's completely wrong and is a lie that keeps being repeated. Life expectancy has increased at all ages: https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit... and "Excluding child mortality, the average life expectancy during the 12th–19th centuries was approximately 55 years." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
- antisthenes 3y ago
  The difference being that reduced mortality at age 60 adds mostly unproductive years, while reduced mortality at age 0-1 adds mostly productive years.
  - j4yav 3y ago
    But how does that make it completely wrong and a lie?
    - antisthenes 3y ago
      Well, since I didn't say that, maybe you can enlighten us since you brought it up?
      - j4yav 3y ago
        The original comment said that every generation lives longer than the one that came before, and then gp said that that was a lie that keeps being repeated and is only infant mortality improving. Someone then replied with data showing that life expectancy is getting longer even setting aside infant mortality, to which you replied that the difference was that reduced mortality at age 60 adds mostly unproductive years, while reduced mortality at age 0-1 adds mostly productive years. My question was how that has any bearing on the question in this thread of whether or not people are living longer? It wasn't clear to me at least without more info. Or maybe it was just an unrelated tangent. But that lack of clarity is why I asked.
subharmonicon 3y ago
From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62591/#:~:text=On%20average%20across%20all%20population,of%201.3%20years%20per%20decade https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62591/#:~:text=On%20av.... > On average across all population subgroups, people who survived to age 50 were expected to live over 8 years longer in 2000 than in 1940, corresponding to an increase in e50 from 23 years in 1940 to 31.3 years in 2006, or an average rise of 1.3 years per decade. An 8 year increase in life expectancy at age 50 (from 73 to 81.3) seems like a pretty large increase over the span of 60 years. I’d be more interested to know what the change in healthspan is, though. Living longer is less interesting to me than living longer in good health without worsening pain and disability.
throw0101a 3y ago
> Life expectancy has only been increasing because child mortality has decreased to almost zero. The upper end has not shifted much at all. A change of five to eight years makes a material difference in actuarial terms when you have to plan for retirement: > In 1920–1922, Canadian men who had lived to age 65 could expect to live for 13 more years, and women could expect to live for 13.5 more years (to age 78.0 and 78.5 respectively). The expected total life span of 65-year-olds was substantially higher than life expectancy at birth: 19.2 years higher for men and 18.0 years higher for women. > In 2009–2011, 65-year-old men were expected to live until they were 83.8, while 65-year-old women were expected to live until the age of 86.7. This means that from 1920–1922 to 2009–2011, the life expectancies of 65-year-olds increased by 5.8 years for men and 8.2 years for women. This is a much smaller gain than the 20-year increase in life expectancy for newborns during this same period. * https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2016002-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2016002... Starting at 65, the odds of hitting an age of 90 are worth considering when doing planning: > Assume we have 1,000 relatively healthy 65-year-old men. The chances of their staying alive at least until their 80s are quite good. More difficult, however, is avoiding critical illness – very serious conditions such as heart attacks, life-threatening cancers, stroke and Alzheimer’s. (There are 14 classifications in all.) While more than 500 of these men will survive until age 90, only 39 of them are expected to avoid a critical illness by that age. Of the 41 survivors at age 100, none is expected to be free of critical illness. * https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-what-are-the-odds-of-a-man-reaching-100-in-reasonably-good-health/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/r...
jermaustin1 3y ago
I get what you are trying to say, but your figures are a bit off. In the last few centuries (outside of war/famine/et), if you made it to "adulthood" (depending on the statistic 15-20 years old) and were male, you had a reasonable likelihood to live until "old age" (late-60s to early-70s). The problem is making it to adulthood wasn't straight forward. Until the 20th century, your likelihood to make it to adulthood was only 50/50. There even if you made it out of infancy, child labor, disease, food affordability, etc., were all major causes of death. Making it to adulthood meant that you were lucky or privileged. Now for calculating retirement ages for individuals who were adults when they started working, sure, the life expectancy has basically been flat. Maybe a few years of uptick, but nothing substantial like it seems looking at the overall stats of going from 45 to 75.

Aeolun 3y ago

Are we talking about the top 5% or the top 0.01%? Because it seems to me the top 5% is definitely going up. I don’t think people regularly aged to 8x in the 1500s (mostly due to higher prevalence of disease).

woodruffw 3y ago

In most models, falling child mortality is responsible for about half of the life expectancy growth in the past 150 years. But the other half is indeed longer lives at all age groups[1]. So I don’t think this is a lie, or even misleading (since the author made no claim about non-childhood causes being disproportionate). [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit...

buzzy_hacker 3y ago

“It’s not just about child mortality, life expectancy increased at all ages” https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit...

foundart 3y ago

Where do you get that information? I realize that the reduction of infant mortality has been a major factor in the change in expected lifespan, but there have also been gains in expected remaining lifespan at 65. For example, this study reported on in 2018: The researchers looked at birth and death data for people above age 65 from 1960-2010. They found that the average age of death in those who live to be older than 65 increased by three years in every 25-year period, which means that people can expect to live about six years longer than their grandparents, on average. Furthermore, this trend continued at a relatively stable pace over the entire 50-year period and in all 20 countries that they analyzed. Factors like medical breakthroughs caused minor fluctuations in how quickly lifespans increased, but these variations averaged out over time https://news.stanford.edu/2018/11/06/lifespan-increasing-people-live-65/ https://news.stanford.edu/2018/11/06/lifespan-increasing-peo...

jodrellblank 3y ago

No that's completely wrong and is a lie that keeps being repeated. Life expectancy has increased at all ages: https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortalit... and "Excluding child mortality, the average life expectancy during the 12th–19th centuries was approximately 55 years." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

antisthenes 3y ago
The difference being that reduced mortality at age 60 adds mostly unproductive years, while reduced mortality at age 0-1 adds mostly productive years.
- j4yav 3y ago
  But how does that make it completely wrong and a lie?
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    Well, since I didn't say that, maybe you can enlighten us since you brought it up?
    - j4yav 3y ago
      The original comment said that every generation lives longer than the one that came before, and then gp said that that was a lie that keeps being repeated and is only infant mortality improving. Someone then replied with data showing that life expectancy is getting longer even setting aside infant mortality, to which you replied that the difference was that reduced mortality at age 60 adds mostly unproductive years, while reduced mortality at age 0-1 adds mostly productive years. My question was how that has any bearing on the question in this thread of whether or not people are living longer? It wasn't clear to me at least without more info. Or maybe it was just an unrelated tangent. But that lack of clarity is why I asked.

subharmonicon 3y ago

From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62591/#:~:text=On%20average%20across%20all%20population,of%201.3%20years%20per%20decade https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62591/#:~:text=On%20av.... > On average across all population subgroups, people who survived to age 50 were expected to live over 8 years longer in 2000 than in 1940, corresponding to an increase in e50 from 23 years in 1940 to 31.3 years in 2006, or an average rise of 1.3 years per decade. An 8 year increase in life expectancy at age 50 (from 73 to 81.3) seems like a pretty large increase over the span of 60 years. I’d be more interested to know what the change in healthspan is, though. Living longer is less interesting to me than living longer in good health without worsening pain and disability.

throw0101a 3y ago

> Life expectancy has only been increasing because child mortality has decreased to almost zero. The upper end has not shifted much at all. A change of five to eight years makes a material difference in actuarial terms when you have to plan for retirement: > In 1920–1922, Canadian men who had lived to age 65 could expect to live for 13 more years, and women could expect to live for 13.5 more years (to age 78.0 and 78.5 respectively). The expected total life span of 65-year-olds was substantially higher than life expectancy at birth: 19.2 years higher for men and 18.0 years higher for women. > In 2009–2011, 65-year-old men were expected to live until they were 83.8, while 65-year-old women were expected to live until the age of 86.7. This means that from 1920–1922 to 2009–2011, the life expectancies of 65-year-olds increased by 5.8 years for men and 8.2 years for women. This is a much smaller gain than the 20-year increase in life expectancy for newborns during this same period. * https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2016002-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2016002... Starting at 65, the odds of hitting an age of 90 are worth considering when doing planning: > Assume we have 1,000 relatively healthy 65-year-old men. The chances of their staying alive at least until their 80s are quite good. More difficult, however, is avoiding critical illness – very serious conditions such as heart attacks, life-threatening cancers, stroke and Alzheimer’s. (There are 14 classifications in all.) While more than 500 of these men will survive until age 90, only 39 of them are expected to avoid a critical illness by that age. Of the 41 survivors at age 100, none is expected to be free of critical illness. * https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/retirement/article-what-are-the-odds-of-a-man-reaching-100-in-reasonably-good-health/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/personal-finance/r...

jermaustin1 3y ago

I get what you are trying to say, but your figures are a bit off. In the last few centuries (outside of war/famine/et), if you made it to "adulthood" (depending on the statistic 15-20 years old) and were male, you had a reasonable likelihood to live until "old age" (late-60s to early-70s). The problem is making it to adulthood wasn't straight forward. Until the 20th century, your likelihood to make it to adulthood was only 50/50. There even if you made it out of infancy, child labor, disease, food affordability, etc., were all major causes of death. Making it to adulthood meant that you were lucky or privileged. Now for calculating retirement ages for individuals who were adults when they started working, sure, the life expectancy has basically been flat. Maybe a few years of uptick, but nothing substantial like it seems looking at the overall stats of going from 45 to 75.