How much hope can we reasonably have of reaching 100?

Yesterday, we asked you: assuming a good Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL), how much longer do you hope to live?

We got the above-depicted, below-described, set of responses:

• A little over 38% of respondents hope to live another 11–20 years
• A little over 31% hope to live another 31–40 years
• A little over 7% will be content to make it to the next decade
• One (1) respondent hopes to live longer than an additional 100 years

This is interesting when we put it against our graph of how old our subscribers are:

…because it corresponds inversely, right down to the gap/dent in the 40s. And—we may hypothesize—that one person under 18 who hopes to live to 120, perhaps.

This suggests that optimism remains more or less constant, with just a few wobbles that would probably be un-wobbled with a larger sample size.

In other words: most of our education-minded, health-conscious subscriber-base hope to make it to the age of 90-something, while for the most part feeling that 100+ is overly optimistic.

Writer’s anecdote: once upon a time, I was at a longevity conference in Brussels, and a speaker did a similar survey, but by show of hands. He started low by asking “put your hands up if you want to live at least a few more minutes”. I did so, with an urgency that made him laugh, and say “Don’t worry; I don’t have a gun hidden up here!”

Conjecture aside… What does the science say about our optimism?

First of all, a quick recap…

To not give you the same information twice, let’s note we did an “aging mythbusting” piece already covering:

• Aging is inevitable: True or False?
• Aging is, and always will be, unstoppable: True or False?
• We can slow aging: True or False?
• It’s too early to worry about… / It’s too late to do anything about… True or False?
• We can halt aging: True or False?
• We can reverse aging: True or False?
• But those aren’t really being younger, we’ll still die when our time is up: True or False?

You can read the answers to all of those here:

Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?

Now, onwards…

It is unreasonable to expect to live past 100: True or False?

True or False, depending on your own circumstances.

First, external circumstances: the modal average person in Hong Kong is currently in their 50s and can expect to live into their late 80s, while the modal average person in Gaza is 14 and may not expect to make it to 15 right now.

To avoid extremes, let’s look at the US, where the modal average person is currently in their 30s and can expect to live into their 70s:

United States Mortality Database

Now, before that unduly worries our many readers already in their 70s…

Next, personal circumstances: not just your health, but your socioeconomic standing. And in the US, one of the biggest factors is the kind of health insurance one has:

SOA Research Institute | Life Expectancy Calculator 2021

You may note that the above source puts all groups into a life expectancy in the 80s—whereas the previous source gave 70s.

Why is this? It’s because the SOA, whose primary job is calculating life insurance risks, is working from a sample of people who have, or are applying for, life insurance. So it misses out many people who die younger without such.

New advances in medical technology are helping people to live longer: True or False?

True, assuming access to those. Our subscribers are mostly in North America, and have an economic position that affords good access to healthcare. But beware…

On the one hand:

The number of people who live past the age of 100 has been on the rise for decades

On the other hand:

The average life expectancy in the U.S. has been on the decline for three consecutive years

COVID is, of course, largely to blame for that, though:

❝The decline of 1.8 years in life expectancy was primarily due to increases in mortality from COVID-19 (61.2% of the negative contribution).

The decline in life expectancy would have been even greater if not for the offsetting effects of decreases in mortality due to cancer (43.1%)❞

Source: National Vital Statistics Reports

The US stats are applicable to Canada, the UK, and Australia: True or False?

False: it’s not quite so universal. Differences in healthcare systems will account for a lot, but there are other factors too:

• Life expectancy in Canada fell for the 3rd year in a row. What’s happening?
• UK life expectancy lagging behind rest of G7 except the US
• Australians are living longer but what does it take to reach 100 years old?

Here’s an interesting (UK-based) tool that calculates not just your life expectancy, but also gives the odds of living to various ages (e.g. this writer was given odds of living to 87, 96, 100).

Check yours here:

Office of National Statistics | Life Expectancy Calculator

To finish on a cheery note…

Data from Italian centenarians suggests a “mortality plateau”:

❝The risk of dying leveled off in people 105 and older, the team reports online today in Science.

That means a 106-year-old has the same probability of living to 107 as a 111-year-old does of living to 112.

Furthermore, when the researchers broke down the data by the subjects’ year of birth, they noticed that over time, more people appear to be reaching age 105.❞

Pop-sci source: Once you hit this age, aging appears to stop

Actual paper: The plateau of human mortality: demography of longevity pioneers

Take care!