
Half the people in human history who reached the age of 65 are alive now. - abstractbill
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100-the-shock-of-the-old-welcome-to-the-elderly-age.html
======
avani
I'm surprised this statistic isn't brought out more in articles that call
cancer, heart disease, etc. diseases of the developed world vs. the modern
world, the difference being that instead of living in a pure time of organic
everything, many people simply didn't live long enough to develop our modern
diseases.

~~~
pyre
The way we eat in the 'developed world' is not necessarily the reason that
people are living longer. Advances in medicine, sanitation, personal hygiene,
etc probably have played a larger role.

That said, being in 'the developed world' doesn't necessarily mean that we are
eating worse than in previous years. IIRC, the Irish Potato Famine happened
because most of the farmers in Ireland ate a diet that mostly consisted of
potatoes, so they were starving when the crops were bad (I believe the
potatoes that they grew for themselves were different than the ones they grew
for the land-owners, and it was the type of potato that they grew for personal
food that suffered causing starving farmers). I can't imagine that a diet that
largely consists of potatoes is necessarily healthier than eating McDonald's
everyday. Just saying...

~~~
JacobAldridge
Actually, you could survive solely on a diet of potatoes and milk, with all
the essential nutrients provided -
[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-
surviv...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-survive-on-
nothing-but-potatoes-and-milk) (This includes more potato famine info as
well).

I doubt fries and a shake would work as well. Then again, maybe it's just
evolving 'essential nutrients' to 'essential nutrients with optional
cholesterol'.

------
sliverstorm
It's kind of out of control in Japan, but lower birth rate seems like a good
thing. The world could use a little population decline, and that's the best
way to go about it imho.

It will unbalance the age distribution, and as a relatively young person I
don't love the idea, but it's better than other forms of population decline...

edit: Seriously? You guys think lower birthrates are bad? "world fertility has
halved to just 2.6 babies per woman"... if we kept up at 5.2 the world
population would almost double every 20 years. Believe it or not, that will
cause problems.

~~~
Periodic
I don't think this shift has anything to do with people wanting to reduce the
birth rate, though I agree that this situation is something we were going to
have to deal with eventually.

We live in a world with finite resources. I've seen a few scientists point out
that you can never continue exponential growth in a finite system. Whether it
is the population or the economy, we have to level-off at some point.

Sadly, the ecological limit is imposed by starvation. I'd like to think we're
smart enough to stop before that.

~~~
Dove
World population growth is not exponential, but logistic. A logistic curve
looks exponential until you pass the inflection point. IIRC, we did that in
the '80s.

~~~
lotharbot
Yes[1]; most of the current population estimates show the world population
leveling off in the 9-12 billion range. Percentage growth rate actually peaked
in the mid 1960s (about 2.2%), and absolute growth peaked in the late 1980s
(about 85 million people per year.) This is completely expected from logistic
growth models[2].

Different species reach logistic growth in different ways. As the grandparent
post noted, "reduced birth rate" is better than alternatives like "mass
starvation". Lower birth rates are not a bad thing from a population growth
perspective, though the demographic shift they bring about will require
changes to our expectations regarding retirement. It's rather unfortunate that
we're still using a retirement model designed when life expectancy was lower
and birth rates were higher.

[1]"Who's that insightful person who posted about logistic growth and stole my
thunder? Oh, hi, honey!"

[2]The image at [http://www.growth-
dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image...](http://www.growth-
dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image004.gif) shows actual world
population data following a logistic curve, compared to an exponential curve
above.

------
Periodic
So we know that people are living longer and longer. We also know that yearly
health care costs are rising. We also seem to think we can keep the latter in
control while continuing with the former.

The fact is that older people incur much larger healthcare costs over their
lifetimes [1]. In fact, "[those 85+] consume three times as much health care
per person as those 65–74, and twice as much as those 75–84." If we keep
inventing new treatments to keep you going until the next crisis, or another
drug to take to prevent yet another fatal condition, then we're going to have
to realize that health care costs per life-time are going to increase, and
that is going to be spread through the population through insurance.

Unless our lifetime earnings increase as fast as the cost of medical
technology, we will reach a point where we cannot afford to live longer even
though the treatments exist. We may get to a point where we have to make the
hard decision of how long we want to wait until we retire and how long we
really want to live after we retire.

I don't know what the solution is, but I can't help but notice that we are not
in a sustainable situation.

1\. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1361028/>

~~~
apsec112
"So we know that people are living longer and longer. We also know that yearly
health care costs are rising. We also seem to think we can keep the latter in
control while continuing with the former."

This is a lie spread by the medical guild to convince you to give them more
money. In face, the increase in life expectancy has _leveled off_ during the
past thirty years (citation:
[http://daveeriqat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/us_life_expect...](http://daveeriqat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/us_life_expectancy.png)),
the time period during which medical costs have risen so much. All of the
extra trillions we've spent on medicine have done very little.

"The fact is that older people incur much larger healthcare costs over their
lifetimes [1]."

This is, in large part, because older people have less energy, and are
therefore easier to bully into handing all their money over to the medical
guild.

"We may get to a point where we have to make the hard decision of how long we
want to wait until we retire and how long we really want to live after we
retire."

This is, again, BS spread by the medical industry to inflate prices. The US
spends twice as much on healthcare as any other country, yet ranks 42nd in
life expectancy (citation:
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293008,00.html>, from Fox News, no less).
_The obscene amounts of money are not working_.

~~~
nradov
There are several reasons why US healthcare costs are higher than other
countries, and there is certainly a lot of inefficiency that should be fixed.
But one of the major reasons is that the US effectively subsidizes drug
development for the rest of the world. US buyers generally have to pay full
market rate, and then in other countries prices are fixed artificially low by
government fiat. The US probably can't continue paying that subsidy forever,
so eventually either other countries will have to pay more, or the US will
also start fixing prices and thus research funds will dry up.

~~~
blasdel
We're subsidizing marketing campaigns by paying market rates, not
pharmaceutical development.

------
whyme
If I have to work until eighty - I might as well not wait and start relaxing
now. Fortunately I don't plan to take that long.

~~~
radu_floricica
This brings a very interesting point. If pensions are a modern invention then
they are not necessary something permanent. The logical way to approach the
problem is an open-ended way: no more pensions means no more living for
retirement. Life should simply be lived the best way possible. Savings are of
course necessary, but it's everybody's decision if/when/how they start using
them.

~~~
heresy
For that to work, ageism in hiring practices needs to be illegal.

------
tokenadult
I didn't see in this article a fact I am checking now,

[http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a916131954&...](http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a916131954&db=all)

that fully one-half of girls born this year or later in the developed world
will live to the age of 100. Male life expectancy for boys born after the year
2000 is also well into nine decades of life.

~~~
smallblacksun
That's not a fact, it's a prediction.

~~~
tokenadult
Yeah, I know what you mean, but if you accept the statements that

a) global warming will continue

or

b) human population will continue to increase for a few more decades

or

c) the sun will rise tomorrow

you know in what sense I can take a statement about the future as a fact.

Here's a link to a popular account of research on this issue:

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8284574.stm>

Here are links to research articles:

[http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961460-4/abstract)

[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/pdf/nature08...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/pdf/nature08984.pdf)

------
ZeroGravitas
There was a rant here recently that, in passing, noted that there's more
blacksmiths alive today than ever in history and that more people are making
neolithic arrowheads today than at any point in history.

The point of the article is that we're living longer, but the headline stat is
probably mostly due to the fact that there's lots of us about.

------
bryanh
A New Scientist headline in 10 years: Half the people in human history who
reached the age of 75 are alive now.

~~~
lurkinggrue
Onion headline: World Death Rate Holding Steady At 100 Percent.

------
mortenjorck
This reminds me a bit of the Bruce Sterling novel _Holy Fire_ , in which
soaring life expectancies and prolonged professional careers create a new,
more severe generation gap between the "gerontocracy" and the younger
generations. Sterling's speculative future didn't include a birthrate decline,
though. What happens to our society when younger people become an increasingly
marginalized minority?

~~~
imack
You would see political gridlock over pension/social security programs cutting
back on anything, health care becoming an entitlement program, a casual
disregard for running up debts that future generations have to pay, and
education costs drastically out-pacing inflation.

~~~
Raphael
So business as usual.

------
threwoff
The world can live on hemp seeds, edible mushrooms and giant silkworm moth
larvae. You can power a laptop by biking. You can power a _bike_ by biking.

If every person had just one child, the world population would drop by 50% in
thirty years, disregarding wars, catastrophes and epidemics.

The world won't end. It'll just change... when you notice it may end.

------
dean
"Half the people in human history who reached the age of 65 are alive now."

It's an interesting comment, but the article offers nothing to back it up. How
would they know that?

------
jwtanner
Nobody will live to 65 in a road warrior type apocalypse.

~~~
mortenjorck
I don't think peak oil is likely to bring that about any time soon.

Several countries seem quite well on their way to bringing about the world of
_Children of Men_ , though.

~~~
huherto
"... world of Children of Men, though." ah great movie. I almost cried on the
scene where all the soldiers and the insurgents stop fighting to protect the
baby.

~~~
mapleoin
I hope you're being ironic.

------
erlanger
[citation needed]

