Global Life Expectancy Has Risen by Six Years Since 1990

This study confirms other work that shows the ballpark growth in life expectancy at birth is something like one year with every four calendar years. Adult life expectancy is also climbing, but more slowly - perhaps one year each decade. This present pace will change as the research community starts to deliberately target aging for treatment, which has not previously been the case. Past gains in life expectancy at age 30 or 60 due to improvements in medicine have been somewhat incidental, side-effects rather than deliberately obtained results. Global life expectancy for both sexes increased from 65.3 years in 1990, to 71.5 years in 2013, while the number of deaths [per year] increased from 47.5 million to 54.9 million over the same interval. Global progress masked variation by age and sex: for children, average absolute differences between countries decreased but relative differences increased. For women aged 25-39 years and older than 75 years and for men aged 20-49 years and 65 years and older, both absolute and relative differences increased. Decomposition of global and regional life expectancy showed the prominent role of reductions in age-standardised death rates for cardiovascular diseases and cancers in high-income regions, and reductions in child deaths from diarrhoea, lower respiratory infections, and neonatal causes in low-income regions. For most countries, the general pattern of reductions in age-sex specific mortality has been associated with a progressive shift...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs