If there was a classified list of this year’s biggest buzzwords, “anti-aging” and “longevity” might be ranked first and second. The quest to join the centenarians club (people who live to be 100 years or older) has evolved into cold plunges, red light therapy, IV treatments, and a myriad of diet trends. However, all that may be for nothing, according to new research published in the journal Nature Aging, which states that the increased rate of human life expectancy has “decelerated” in the last 30 years.
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Back in 1990, gerontologist S. Jay Olshansky predicted that only one to five percent of people would live to celebrate their 100th birthday, with the average human lifespan being 85 years. Fast-forward 34 years of longevity data later, Olshansky was right.
“Over the course of the twentieth century, human life expectancy at birth rose in high-income nations by approximately 30 years, largely driven by advances in public health and medicine,” Olshanksy said in the study. This was, in part, thanks to medical advancements and environmental growth.
“Mortality reduction was observed initially at an early age and continued into middle and older ages. However, it was unclear whether this phenomenon and the resulting accelerated rise in life expectancy would continue into the [21st] century,” he said of the study’s inspiration.
Now, knee-deep into the 21st century, Olshansky decided it was time to revisit his original thesis and see if there was any merit to it.
The published analysis explored 30 years worth of “recent trends in death rates and life expectancy” from the years 1990 to 2019.
For the study, Olshansky and his team analyzed “demographic survivorship metrics” from eight countries with the longest-lived populations, including Australia, France, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. They also gathered lifespan data from Hong Kong and the U.S.
Despite these countries being home to some of the oldest people in the world, researchers found that the rate/pace of longevity has slowed down considerably. In other words, instead of thousands of people living to be 100 years old, now there’s only a small handful.
Hong Kong was the one exception where deceleration wasn’t prevalent.
“We have shown the era of rapid increases in human life expectancy has ended, just as we predicted,” Olshansky told CNN.
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At a glance, their findings suggest that females only have a 15 percent chance of living until 100 years old, while males only have a five percent chance.
“Unless the processes of biological aging can be markedly slowed, radical human life extension is implausible in this century,” the authors wrote.
But while the centenarian club is shrinking, people are living longer than they were 30 years ago. In a New York Times interview, Olshansky predicted the maximum life expectancy to be age 87 among both men and women (that’s two years older than the 1990 statistic).
More specifically, he predicted age 84 for men and age 90 for women.
“Now, I want to make sure that this is interpreted correctly,” Olshansky stressed to CNN. “We’re still gaining life expectancy, but it’s at an increasingly slower pace than in previous decades.”