Longevity problems
October 2, 2009
A report published in the medical journal The Lancet on Friday suggests that around half of babies born now in developed countries will reach the age of 100 if life expectancy continues to grow at the current rate.
The report is based on the results of studies carried out by age research centers at the University of Southern Denmark and the Max Planck Institute in Rostock, Germany, led by Professor Kaare Christensen.
"Traditionally, man has three major periods of life: childhood, adulthood and old age," the researchers wrote. "Old age is now evolving into two segments, a third age (young old) and a fourth age (oldest old)."
Life expectancy has steadily increased in the last 150 years, with the rate of old-age mortality steadily dropping. In 1950, only 15 percent of 80-year-old women reached their 90th birthdays. In 2002, that figure was already at 37 percent.
According to a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, life expectancy in Germany increases by three months every year, with the latest statistics from the Federal Statistical Office showing a life expectancy of 77.2 years for men and 82.4 years for women.
Living longer and living better
One of the main discoveries of the new research is that human life expectancy does not yet appear to be reaching a natural limit. "If life expectancy was approaching a limit, some deceleration of progress would probably occur," the scientists wrote in The Lancet, "Continued progress in the longest-living populations suggests that we are not close to a limit, and further rise in life expectancy seems likely."
According to the report, people who reach extreme old age are not only living longer, but staying independent and healthy, contradicting theories that suggest extreme old age is mainly a vegetative state.
"Seventy-five-year-olds today are presumably as able-bodied as 65-year-olds 30 years ago," Martin Halle, director of the sports medicine center at the Technical University in Munich, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
A recent Danish report found that 30-40 percent of 92-100-year-olds lived independent lives, while a US study showed that 40 percent of 32 supercentenarians (those more than 110 years old) needed little day-to-day assistance or were independent.
Citing these statistics, the Lancet concluded, "A key question is: are increases in life expectancy accompanied by a concurrent postponement of functional limitations and disability? The answer is still open, but research suggests that ageing processes are modifiable and that people are living longer without severe disability."
Working less for longer
But the report also warned that the combination of falling birth rates and increasing life expectancy means that the population of the developed world is ageing rapidly. Using Germany as an example, the Lancet report found that its population in 2050 "will be substantially older and smaller" than it is now, even allowing for immigration.
This is likely to put an unsustainable strain on modern welfare states in their current form, and Christensen's team warns that substantial restructuring of working life will be required in the first world. Their solution is to redistribute work over a longer period - postponing the standard retirement age and reducing weekly working hours.
But the Danish team maintains that shortening the working week and extending working life will not solve all the problems presented by an ageing society, and at some point more resources will need to be used for caring for the elderly, despite technological advances.
(bk)
Editor: Nancy Isenson