
Twice as long – life expectancy around the world - okket
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy-globally
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juskrey
Life expectancy at, say, age 25 would be much more interesting information.
Expectancy at 0 years (that is plain average) gives only the information about
children mortality.

~~~
ddebernardy
Even life expectancy at age 25 is mostly meaningless, actually. Women
mortality (due to childbirth) took a significant toll on the average life
expectancy as well. And another two significant scourges were famines and
epidemics.

~~~
vasco
Well, if you take away all the mortality causes of the time you'll end up
thinking things were pretty good back then, since people weren't dying in car
crashes.

~~~
sacado2
Yep, but life expectancy is not a very intuitive concept. When they read "life
expectancy was 25 years", many people tend to think a 30 year old was some
kind of lucky but senile guy back then. Dying of old age was just not the
norm.

~~~
Brockenstein
Dying of old age was a norm. There were plenty of old people way back when.
It's just that lots of people dying young (well across all age groups) was the
norm too.

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wjossey
I went down a rabbit whole and eventually stumbled upon this small webpage
documenting changes from 1900 to 2000.

[https://demography.cpc.unc.edu/2014/06/16/mortality-and-
caus...](https://demography.cpc.unc.edu/2014/06/16/mortality-and-cause-of-
death-1900-v-2010/)

I also pulled up car accident fatalities and found it interesting that we
peaked in the 30s and 40s per capita in the US, despite the major investment
of the highway system in the 50s which one could have presumed would have made
it far worse given the combination of speed and lack of air bags. Then again,
my anecdotal experience says that I know far more people killed or severely
injured from country driving and small town DUI than highway driving.

I wonder what the 2100 graph will say? Will that cancer chunk be eliminated or
mostly scrunched down? Will we have figured out how to grow new hearts so we
eliminate heart disease? Hope I live long enough to find out (I’d be 115).

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Life expectancy is going to drop due to 150 million premature deaths from CO2
over the 21st century unless we can reduce CO2 emissions.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0108-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0108-y)

And this says nothing about the direct and indirect deaths from rising sea
levels: famine, wars, pandemics, etc.

~~~
njarboe
Not a very honest paper title. "Quantified, localized health benefits of
accelerated carbon dioxide emissions reductions". I lost a little more respect
for Nature today. To call them premature deaths due to CO2 when they are
really about other things that are emitted with the CO2 when burning fossil
fuels, is deceptive.

From the article abstract:

"This generally reduces co-emissions that cause ambient air pollution,
resulting in near-term, localized health benefits. We therefore examine the
human health benefits of increasing 21st-century CO2 reductions by 180 GtC, an
amount that would shift a ‘standard’ 2 °C scenario to 1.5 °C or could achieve
2 °C without negative emissions."

I did not read the article but the abstract emphasizes the number of lives
saved in Asia and Africa. It is probably the reduction in burning coal without
any scrubbers that gives the large reduction in deaths. Reducing natural gas
power generation in the US would likely reduce few deaths.

~~~
wjossey
I had written a similar post earlier but decided not to submit as I felt I
must have been missing something. You articulated what I was attempting to say
very well. Thank you!

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kmonsen
This is really the story about the 99%, very rich people lived about as long
in ancient times as they do now. Well, woman still died from giving birth.

[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-
ancien...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-
people-live-life-span-versus-longevity)

For the rest of us though, life has become better and healthier.

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sureaboutthis
It's a sobering fact that, when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two
years.

~~~
adam12
For others who would like to know: Mozart died at 35.

From Wikipedia:

The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35.
The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation.
Some principal sources of contention are as follows.

* Whether Mozart declined gradually, experiencing great fear and sadness, or whether he was fundamentally in good spirits toward the end of his life, then felled by a relatively sudden illness. The former hypothesis was accepted for most of the history of Mozart biography, but the latter has been advanced by contemporary scholars.

* The actual cause of his death: whether it was from disease or poisoning. The poisoning hypothesis is widely discredited. If a particular disease was the actual cause of death, then it remains unknown; only plausible conjectures can be offered.

* His funeral arrangements, and whether they were the normal procedures for his day, or if they were of a disrespectful nature. Modern scholarship generally supports the view that the funeral arrangements were normal for Mozart's time.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Moza...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart)

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treya
I've run across a number of not just anecdotal accounts of long longevity,
good health and lack of disease in a number of different indigenous cultures.
I get the uncomfortable feeling that we are persistently and myopically
comparing ourselves to in terms of health and longevity (and
happiness/satisfaction for that matter) to what has been essentially a
pathological state of human existence in the newer civilizations of the last
couple thousand years. And still in modern times the diseases of civilization
are raging as hard as ever.

For a good example, read the description of the Crow Indians in the last
appendix of Journal of A Trapper:

[https://books.google.com/books?id=49HTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=fron...](https://books.google.com/books?id=49HTAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0)

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throwaway321339
The worse figures are in colonies that Europeans plundered for a century or
more (India and Africa). Sadly neither numbers nor suffering is sufficient to
wipe the century old propaganda that their thievery was 'benign civilization'.

Sad.

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dannylandau
An interesting graphic would be life expectancy in US per state, is there one?

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nervousvarun
Not sure about a graphic but this information is available in wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy)

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nlstitch
These articles always frustrate the crap out of me as "life expectancy" isn't
the right metric; While living longer we tend to be sick (both physical and
mental) longer. Just think of the fact that we've seen an increase in the
amount of "confused people" and even hotlines to report those;

Getting overstimulated by shocking videos/news outlets on our phones, feeling
ousted/depressed by seeing other people pretend to have happy lives on social
media or seeing marketing from websites pretending its perfectly normal to
play with each others feelings by having affairs.

~~~
lox
Your comment is the perfect illustration of exactly the issues that you
complain about. You make sweeping claims without citations that are meant to
invoke a deep sense that despite data showing otherwise that life is getting
worse. Consider that you are part of the problem.

~~~
nlstitch
Ouch man; no need to make this personal. Thanks for agreeing with me though.
Here you go;

14% increase of confused people (dutch) ; [https://demonitor.kro-
ncrv.nl/onderzoeken/verwarde-mensen](https://demonitor.kro-
ncrv.nl/onderzoeken/verwarde-mensen)

Living longer but sick longer;
[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/life-
expectancy-a...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/life-expectancy-
average-healthy-the-lancet-diseases-when-will-i-die-a7349826.html)

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prepare-for-a-sick-old-
age...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/prepare-for-a-sick-old-age-twice-as-
many-older-people-will-suffer-from-four-or-more-diseases-by-2035-2018-01-25)

TED talk about children getting overstimulated by Youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w)

~~~
wild_preference
fwiw “confused” isn’t an appropriate word for mentally ill in english.

~~~
nlstitch
I had some doubts about using that word but people don't necessarily need to
be "ill"; Your average Joe is able to "snap" (let alone be confused about life
or have a momentary mental breakdown) too. Being mentally ill on the other
hand is stating its there for a longer period. (e.g days/months/lifetime).

