Humanity is hitting the upper limit of life expectancy, according to a new study. Advances in medical technology and genetic research—not to mention larger numbers of people making it to age 100—are not translating into marked jumps in lifespan overall, according to researchers who found shrinking longevity increases in countries with the longest-living populations, the AP reports. "We have to recognize there's a limit" and perhaps reassess assumptions about when people should retire and how much money they'll need to live out their lives, said S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois-Chicago researcher who was lead author of the study published Monday by Nature Aging.
"We are reaching a plateau," agrees another expert not involved in the study. It's always possible some breakthrough could push survival to greater heights, "but we don't have that now," he said. Olshansky and his research partners tracked life expectancy estimates for the years 1990 to 2019. The researchers focused on eight countries where people live the longest—Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, and Switzerland. The US doesn't even rank in the top 40. But is also was included "because we live here" and because of past, bold estimates that US life expectancy might surge dramatically this century, Olshansky said. Some takeaways:
- Women continue to live longer than men and life expectancy improvements are still occurring—but at a slowing pace. In 1990, the average amount of improvement was about 2.5 years per decade. In the 2010s, it was 1.5 years—and almost zero in the US.
- The US is more problematic because it is harder hit by a range of issues that kill people before they hit old age, including drug overdoses, shootings, obesity, and inequities that make it hard for some people to get sufficient medical care. But in one calculation, the researchers estimated what would happen in all nine places if all deaths before age 50 were eliminated. The increase at best was still only 1.5 years.
- The study suggests that there's a limit to how long most people live, and we've about hit it. "We're squeezing less and less life out of these life-extending technologies. And the reason is, aging gets in the way," Olshansky said.
- It may seem common to hear of a person living to 100, but experts say that while the number of centenarians in the world is likely to grow, that's because of population growth—not because of a higher percentage of people living to 100.
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