The life expectancy increase in old age is actually better than you say, and that may be due to great improvements in treating heart disease and cancer. http:/

The life expectancy increase in old age is actually better than you say, and that may be due to great improvements in treating heart disease and cancer. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/07/on-elder-life-expectancy.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/07/on-elder-life-exp... It is true, however, that the bulk of historical increases in life span at birth are due to the reduction in infectious disease burden. Infectious disease both kills people young and adds systematic damage to the survivors such that their life expectancy is reduced. http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/12/plasticity-of-l.php http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/12/plasticity-of-l.p... So the progress [in life expectancy prior to 1950] was largely due to saving lives below age sixty-five, especially children. But after 1950 the improvements to life expectancy have largely been due to saving lives after age sixty-five, to this extension of life, to this giving - adding years to the life of older people. So it's been a remarkable shift, and the shift has been due to the fact that since 1950 we've had various kinds of interventions that could help save people from heart disease, that could intervene with various infectious diseases that were killing very old people, so the antibiotics and so on helped older people a lot.