A study has come to an encouraging conclusion for anyone hoping to live a long life.
According to a new study, the current record for the longest life expectancy is likely to be broken in the coming decades. This is because maximum human life expectancy, if it exists at all, has not yet been reached.
In most countries, average life expectancy has been rising for decades thanks to better healthcare, hygiene, and nutrition. However, the maximum human lifespan has not changed since 1997, when Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment (born in 1875) died at the age of 122.
This has led to speculation about whether there is an upper limit to human lifespan. Average life expectancy may continue to approach this upper limit, but no matter how much progress we make as a society, humans will simply not exceed this age.
Biology vs. statistics
Until now, much of the research on maximum human lifespan has focused on biology. A study published in March 2023 in the journal PLOS One approached the topic from a statistical perspective and came to an encouraging conclusion for anyone hoping for a long life.
“Our results confirm previous work suggesting that if there is an upper limit to human lifespan, we are not yet approaching it,” write authors David McCarthy and Po-Lin Wang of the University of Georgia and the University of South Florida, respectively.
For their study, the authors analyzed mortality data from the US and 18 other industrialized nations for people born in the same year. They found that while the average age at death has been steadily increasing throughout history, there are also times when the maximum age increases sharply—a phenomenon known as “mortality shift.”
This was observed, for example, in women born between 1855 and 1875, and there are signs that it is also happening in groups born between 1900 and 1950. So far, none of these people have broken the record for maximum human life expectancy because most of them are still too young.
According to the researchers’ analysis, one group in particular seems to be at the forefront of the phenomenon. The model suggests that the oldest Japanese woman, born in 1940, has a 50 percent chance of living to be over 130 years old.
Longevity needs support
This also depends on whether the model is an accurate description of how morals will change in old age and whether there is a stable economic, political, and ecological environment that continues to support extreme longevity.
The idea that there is no maximum human life expectancy is exciting—on the one hand, it means that immortality is not theoretically off the table—but it also means that a situation we are already struggling with, namely the aging of the world’s population, could have an even greater impact in the future.
This makes it all the more important to start thinking now about how to care for this growing group of seniors in their final years. Part of the solution could lie in wearable technology, advanced household robots, and autonomous food delivery.
References
- McCarthy, D. & Wang, P. (2023). Mortality postponement and compression at older ages in human cohorts. PLOS ONE, 18(3), e0281752. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0281752
- Lu, J. K., Sijm, M., Janssens, G. E., Goh, J. & Maier, A. B. (2023). Remote monitoring technologies for measuring cardiovascular functions in community-dwelling adults: a systematic review. GeroScience. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-023-00815-4