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Whose Life Expectancy is It, Anyway?

I admit, I'm annoyed. I am constantly hearing and reading on the news, talk shows, health books, etc, how we have doubled our lifespan, all due to the miracle of science, in recent years. This is total hogwash. Lifespan has not increased by more than a couple of years at most. For an anecdotal example, I have only to think of my own family. I knew all four of my great-grandmothers, who lived well into their nineties, as have both of my grandmothers. Only one great-grandfather made it up to ninety, but the others lived well past sixty and seventy; and my grandfathers died at ages sixty-five and seventy-five. They knew their grandparents and great-grandparents as well.

So, what is the misconception, and what is everyone talking about when they say lifespan has doubled? Well, they are very mistakenly comparing the average age at death 100 years ago to the maximum lifespan today. Average age at death has certainly increased. Years ago, many babies died at birth, many mothers died in childbearing, many children and adults died of infectious disease and accidents; this brought the average age at death down to around forty years of age. But if one were able to avoid these deadly pitfalls, there was no bar to living to a ripe old age. How ridiculous to think of a forty-year-old pioneer man, perfectly healthy living and working on the prairie (and far more healthy than most forty-year-old men today), suddenly dropping dead at forty-one because he had reached the maximum lifespan for the times.

Modern medical science has increased average age at death considerably by reducing infant and maternal mortality and by greatly improved crisis care that reduces deaths from disease and accidents. An injury that might have been life-threatening years ago is easily cared for today. So since fewer infants and mothers die in childbed, and fewer people die of infectious disease and accidents, average age at death is considerably higher than in years past.

However, modern medical science has increased maximum lifespan by only a few years, from about seventy-two up to about seventy-six. People who lived a hundred or more years ago who avoided the perils of infectious disease could expect to live well into their seventies, eighties, and beyond; the slight increase in maximum lifespan is due to machines and drugs and other means of staving off the end of the many chronic illnesses rampant today. In fact, there is evidence that most of the elderly in years gone by could and did enjoy greater health in their old age than someone living so long today can expect. Octogenarians today can expect to suffer from many chronic problems such as arthritis, diabetes, and cancer, with medications, surgeries, and long hospital stays to alleviate their health problems, rather than dying quietly in their sleep after enjoying rude health their life long, as my great-grandmothers did. But that's another topic entirely.

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