shouldn’t we have extended the life expectancy to at least 90-100 years with all the advancements we have in medicine now?
In: Biology
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
Tge average life expectancy has been going up since the industrial revolution and this trend does not seem to stop. Im not sure why you think it should be higher, maybe you forgot that this is am average, so all the victims of crimes or car accidents count too, its not just how old people get who dont die early.
Not just the limits of the human body but also Capitalism. Pollution and also the fact that this current generation (Gen Z) is the first projected to do worse than previous generations before in economical terms, health terms, and more
Even most of the developing world has a higher lifespan than that. For the developed world it’s around 80. Given you didn’t state any country I am going to presume you are an American, where it is mid to high 70s.
As a nurse that works in a hospital, I have seen people living longer but also the amount of people living with chronic conditions also going up mostly due to poor life habits.
because averages like this, take a long time to shift. They are moving, just slowly.
incidentally, I read once that average lifespan in the olden times was around 40 – but actually people still lived into their 70s, it’s just that child mortality was so high, that it skewed the figures
Average lifespan in the top countries is 80 years or more.
The majority of countries can’t afford all of that high tech stuff. Not the expensive medications, not the high tech medical devices like high resolution MRIs etc.
Lets say you live in Nigeria (worlds 6th most populous country). With the median wage, if you get any sort of more difficult to treat cancer or heart condition or kidney problems… you’re fucked. The health care is available, but not at your price point and there is no universal healthcare.
Same in Pakistan (5th most populous) where their universal healthcare program covers medical fees up to 3500 USD. 3500 USD is a shitload for a Pakistani family, but it doesn’t cover any of the advanced life-extending healthcare we’ve gotten used to in the western world.
So people get older, but mostly due to the basic stuff like vaccines and penicillin etc and that kind of technology is mostly old hat by now (we had a pretty good idea of how most of that worked back in 1960). The biggest advancement on healthcare for poor countries is that anti-parasitics have gotten WAY better in the last 40 years, but that has mostly stopped people from dying in their 30s and not so much for people in their 70s.
All the advancements in the world don’t matter if they don’t reach enough people. Who cares if there’s some crazy new medical breakthrough when you can’t afford to see a doctor in the first place?
In America it is because of the horrid food regulations set in place by our government. Whoever makes these guidelines does not seem to know a thing about healthy foods. Medicine can only help poor quality food to a small extent
It’s 84 here in Japan. Are you in the third world somewhere?
It is going up, steadily. I think 2 years average for every 10 years that go by.
We did see a massive increase in the average in the first half of the 1900s with the advent of modern medicine and science advances. But the biggest contributor of that was in infant mortality and early childhood deaths. Nowadays it’s down to like 4 in 1,000 deaths in the first year of life, and we’ve drastically changed everything we do with children from their car seats to the materials their toys are made of.
Dying at the age of 0 was really tanking the average. Eating lead and breathing lead wasn’t doing anyone favors either
Latest Answers