There Global life expectancy continue to grow Rather quickly and we are not sure there is a limit to its maximum extension. To date, in Italy the life expectancy is 84 years old and we are positioned among the first countries of the world for longevity. If he continued to grow as in the last 150 years, in 2500 We could really get to live 200 years. What is the maximum limit to human life is one of the questions that most fascinate and stimulate scientists, journalists and curious of demography. Are we approaching an insurmountable roof or can we still hope to live longer? The truth is that nobody knows the answer, but in recent decades the trend of life expectancy He continued to surprise us.
What is the life expectancy of a human being
You will have heard of talking about life expectancybut we understand well what it is. It is not a forecast on the future, nor does it tell us how old will really live a person born today. And let alone the hope of some nice optimist. It is rather a indicator which photographs the mortality level of a certain population in a year, and it is very easy to understand how it works.
Let’s take, for example, a population of 1000 people who lived in a certain year. Two people died between 0 and 10 years. Only one between 10 and 20 years. Ten died between 50 and 60 years old, thirty between 70 and 80. And so on … with increasingly high numbers as you go up with age. Then over 100 years, there are only two dead, but simply because few come to that age. Now suppose that one hundred new children are born. If, in the course of their life, they experienced at all ages the same proportion of deaths observed in the example, A certain number of years would live on average. Suppose 80: here, 80 would be their life expectancy at birth. What life expectancy tells us is: if everything remained as today, this would be the average duration of life. In this sense, it is a very useful way to summarize and compare the level of health and mortality between populations or between different eras.
Is one theoretical sizetherefore, because if the health conditions of the population improved over the course of these 80 years, the fictitious children of the example could aspire to live on average much more than their life expectancy at birth. This is what generally happens, thanks to the improvements in medicine and in life conditions. So life expectancy speaks to us about today’s mortality, not that of tomorrow.
The surprising growth of life expectancy
As we have defined life expectancy, we can calculate it every year for each country in the world so we have the data. Oepen and Vaupel In 2002, they made a surprising discovery: the best life expectancy recorded in the world in every year has linear growthwho does not seem to want to stop.
We play the same game that the two researchers played, we take the country for every year from 1840 to today with the best life expectancy in the world and let us like his record. In 1840 the highest life expectancy in the world was recorded in Sweden with 45 yearsin 1900 he won theIceland with 60 yearsin 1960 it is the Norway to win with 75 years and so on. Vaupel and Oeppen stopped at 2000, the year in which the record was established by Japan almost 85 years. We have the opportunity to go further: in 2010 the highest level was still reached in Japan which is over 86 years old and finally in 2023 The record belongs to Hong-Kongin which life expectancy at the moment exceeds 88 years.
From the figure and his evolution over timewe note that between 1840 and 2000 life expectancy grows and grows much, but not only: grow so surprisingly linear, More than a year of life expectancy earned every 5 years spent. During this century and a half, in particular from 1900 onwards, all the forecasts made gradually by researchers and scientists were exceeded on the limit of human life. After all, if to date there It seems impossible to exceed 120 years of lifethink how difficult it could be for a 1850 inhabitant to think that reaching 80 could be normal.
After 2000, the last year observed in the study, growth continued and mostly linearly, but we observe a small reduction in the increase in the best life expectancy recorded in the world. If the trend had continued with the stress inclination of the previous 150 years: In 2023 the record should have exceeded 90 years, in 2040 I 95 and exceeded 150 years in 2260.
What will happen in the future? It will depend on many factors. The answer is not only in the data: biology, medicine, our lifestyle has to do with it. Certainly, wars, inequalities and poverty do not help the growth of longevity, and above all they do not do it equal in all parts of the world.
In short, will we continue to live longer and longer? We will find out only by living … or rather, dying.
