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A university team analyzed mortality data from some of the world’s longest-lived communities and found that the rapid rise in life expectancy from the 20th century has sharply slowed over the past three decades.
The researchers concluded that reviving life-expectancy growth will likely require radically new drugs that slow the aging process.
The team also found that children born recently in the regions with the oldest populations are unlikely to become centenarians. The researchers predict that only about 5 percent of women and 2 percent of men in these areas will reach 100 this century.
What else did the scientists reveal?
“If you plan to retire, you probably shouldn’t expect to live to 100,” said study leader Jay Olshansky, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics. “And if you want to enjoy the final stage of your life, you don’t necessarily have to spend it working to save money for a time you may not live to see,” he added.
Advances in health care and medicine sparked a longevity revolution in the 20th century. For roughly 2,000 years before that, life expectancy rose only about one year every 100–200 years. In the last century, it began climbing much faster: people gained roughly three additional years of life every decade, according to The Guardian.
That rapid rise convinced some to extrapolate and predict that most people born after 2000 would reach 100. But as early as 1990, Olshansky’s team questioned that claim, arguing humans hit a biological limit around 85 years.
For the new study, the team collected data from longevity regions worldwide, focusing on 1990–2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic). They found that every region showed a significant slowdown in life-expectancy gains.
In their report, the scientists said that in the regions where people lived the longest, average life expectancy increased by only 6.5 years over the study period. The team projected that for girls born recently there, the likelihood of living to 100 is just 5.3 percent, while for boys it’s only 1.8 percent.
Professor Olshansky remarked, “The game of longevity we are playing today is different from the game we played a hundred years ago when we were saving infants, children, and women of childbearing age, and the increase in life expectancy was significant. Now the increase is small because we are saving people aged 60, 70, 80, and 90.”
Olshansky says that achieving another longevity revolution will require radically new treatments that slow aging — the biggest risk factor for many diseases. Research in this area is ongoing, and there are currently about a dozen drugs that extend the lifespan of mice.
The findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Aging.
