Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T08:14:58.426Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Postscript: How Long Can We Live?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Robert William Fogel
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access

Summary

Will the twenty-first century witness as large an increase in the average life expectancy of the rich countries–thirty to forty years–as occurred during the twentieth century? Most experts believe it will not. The middle estimate of the U.S. Census Bureau, for example, is that the increase in life expectancy between 2000 and 2050 will be only about 7 years, and the estimated increase for the entire twenty-first century is just 13 years. This is less than half the increase that occurred during the twentieth century. The same conservatism is evident in the projections of the UN, OECD, and other national and international agencies.

These pessimistic projections rest on several propositions. Perhaps the most widely accepted is the proposition that opportunities for large reductions in mortality rates are possible only when death rates under age 5 are very high. Proponents of this view argue, for example, that the sharp decline in U.S. mortality rates during the twentieth century was the result of a unique opportunity that cannot be replicated by those nations that have already experienced it: the opportunity to wipe out the majority of deaths due to acute infectious diseases, which were concentrated in infancy and early childhood. Whereas more than a third of all deaths at the turn of the twentieth century were of children under 5, today infant and childhood deaths are less than 2 percent of the annual total.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100
Europe, America, and the Third World
, pp. 108 - 112
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×