Seven startling facts about longevity

A Swiss Re report examining the accuracy of mortality projection models includes several interesting facts about life expectancy. Here are a few of our favourties from that report (plus a few others from elsewhere).

A Swiss man (this is a Swiss Re report, after all) born in 1900 would live to an average of 51. A Swiss man born in 2000 could expect to live to 85.

Mathematician Benjamin Gompertz was the first to observe in 1825 that mortality rates increase exponentially with age. The chance of death approximately doubles every eight years of life.

In the US between 2000 and 2010 (according to ABC News and Med Page Today) there were 40% fewer known cases of heart disease.

One longevity projection model predicts a woman who is aged 65 today can expect to live another 20.9 years and a 75-year-old 13.1 years.

Many interesting claims about longevity can be found in ancient writings. In the book of Genesis, Adam and six of his direct descendants are said to have lived for more than 900 years. The oldest, Methuselah, was said to have lived 969 years.

Not everybody is as old as they say. A study of more than 500 individuals claiming to be between 120 and 170 years old revealed that all were in fact under 108 - and most were in their 80s. In 1959, for example, the famous super-centenarian Vakutia had deserted from the Army in World War I and, with forged documents, had assumed his father's name. He was actually only 78 years old.

The oldest reliably documented human life span at present is 122 years, 164 days in the case of Jeanne Calment of France (21 Feb 1875 - 4 Aug 1997).

Sources:

1) Swiss Re, Awindow into the future: Understanding and predicting longevity, 2011

2) http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/expect.htm