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Long-Run Trends of Human Aging and Longevity

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Author Info

  • Holger Strulik
  • Sebastian Vollmer

    () (Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies)

Abstract

Over the last 200 years humans experienced a huge increase of life expectancy. These advances were largely driven by extrinsic improvements of their environment (for example, the available diet, disease prevalence, vaccination, and the state of hygiene and sanitation). In this paper we ask whether future improvements of life-expectancy will be bounded from above by human life-span. Life-span, in contrast to life-expectancy, is conceptualized as a biological measure of longevity driven by the intrinsic rate of bodily deterioration. In order to pursue our question we first present a modern theory of aging and show that immutable life-span would put an upper limit on life-expectancy. We then show for a sample of developed countries that human life-span thus defined was indeed constant until the 1950s but increased since then by about eight years in sync with life-expectancy. In other words, we find evidence for manufactured life-span.

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File URL: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pgda/WorkingPapers/2011/PGDA_WP_73.pdf
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Program on the Global Demography of Aging in its series PGDA Working Papers with number 7311.

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Date of creation: Aug 2011
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Handle: RePEc:gdm:wpaper:7311

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Web page: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/pgda
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Related research

Keywords: human life-span; life-expectancy; aging; compression of mortality; life-span extension;

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References

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  2. Neil Bruce & Stephen J. Turnovsky, 2009. "Demography and Growth: A Unified Treatment of Overlapping Generations," Working Papers UWEC-2009-21-R, University of Washington, Department of Economics, revised Jun 2011.
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  11. Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan & David Weil, 2010. "Mortality change, the uncertainty effect, and retirement," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 65-91, March.
  12. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Michael Moore, 2007. "A Theory of Retirement," PGDA Working Papers 2607, Program on the Global Demography of Aging.
  13. Ben J. Heijdra & Ward E. Romp, 2008. "A life-cycle overlapping-generations model of the small open economy," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 60(1), pages 88-121, January.
  14. Eric French, 2005. "The Effects of Health, Wealth, and Wages on Labour Supply and Retirement Behaviour," Review of Economic Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 72(2), pages 395-427, 04.
  15. Yoram Ben-Porath, 1967. "The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75, pages 352.
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