We are not "living longer"

[SHRED]

Last edited Sun Aug 28, 2016, 11:11 AM - Edit history (1)

A common misunderstanding is to think we are "living longer". It's a popular myth. One that is even used in an attempt by Cons to raise the eligibility age for Social Security.

Don't fall for it.



Human Lifespans Nearly Constant for 2,000 Years

... the increase in life expectancy between 1907 and 2007 was largely due to a decreasing infant mortality rate, which was 9.99 percent in 1907; 2.63 percent in 1957; and 0.68 percent in 2007.

But the inclusion of infant mortality rates in calculating life expectancy creates the mistaken impression that earlier generations died at a young age; Americans were not dying en masse at the age of 46 in 1907. The fact is that the maximum human lifespan — a concept often confused with "life expectancy" — has remained more or less the same for thousands of years. The idea that our ancestors routinely died young (say, at age 40) has no basis in scientific fact.

Again, the high infant mortality rate skews the "life expectancy" dramatically downward. If a couple has two children and one of them dies in childbirth while the other lives to be 90, stating that on average the couple's children lived to be 45 is statistically accurate but meaningless. Claiming a low average age of death due to high infant mortality is not the same as claiming that the average person in that population will die at that age.

http://www.livescience.com/10569-human-lifespans-constant-2-000-years.html

[lillypaddle]

1. Interesting article nt

[CRF450]

2. Only politicians with their cushy desk jobs are living longer

Even if that was true, those of us who bust ass day in and day out at some point, will get tired of working at all.

[dubyadiprecession]

18. Having power is a Wonderful drug.

It's too hard to retire from that, just ask McCain.

[yallerdawg]

3. If we still add in 'infant mortality rates'...

and we are now living to 70-something instead of 40-something, how can we not be living longer?

Especially that infant!

Sometimes "logic" makes no sense.

[upaloopa]

6. When you say living longer you have to ask compared to what?

Of course we are living longer compared to past generations.

It is all in the way you frame your argument. I am sure someone could prove we all are really just rocks on the ground if framed correctly.

[SHRED]

8. The point is...

Even centuries ago if you made it past childhood you lived to a ripe old age.

the increase in life expectancy between 1907 and 2007 was largely due to a decreasing infant mortality rate, which was 9.99 percent in 1907; 2.63 percent in 1957; and 0.68 percent in 2007.

This factor is not considered by those repeating that we are "living longer" Especially those trying to raise retirement ages and the like.

[yallerdawg]

19. Somebody is misrepresenting something.

Life expectancy is defined as how long a person born today is expected to live if current trends continue.

If you toss out all infant deaths, this article is suggesting we'd actually be living even longer?

And if you toss out all infant deaths, there would be no longer life expectancy today than 100 years ago?

[awoke_in_2003]

57. If you are averaging a group

and 10% of that group dies before they are 1, while the rest die at 70 then compare a same size group where only 5% die before they are one and the rest die at 70, the average age of the second group is going to be higher. The right claims this proves that we are living longer, but is false. The first group has more people dying before they even have a chance to contibute to the SS pot.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Excerpt confuses maximum lifespan with expected lifespan.. . nt

[A Brand New World]

5. I've been working on my family tree and I've discovered this to be true.

I've been able to go back to the 1400's in some lines and most of my relatives lived to be in their 80's, which is common nowadays also.

[Freddie]

24. Especially for women

2x great grandma died in childbirth (or the cumulative effects of having 7 babies in 10 years) at 35. 2x great-grandpa's 2nd wife (who raised all the orphaned children) lived to 85. If a woman survived her childbearing years she often lived to a ripe old age.
The men often died between 40 and 65 of strokes and heart attacks, and this is where modern medicine has improved lifespans tremendously just in the last 30 years.

[csziggy]

26. Same here - if you survived childhood, disease, warfare and accidents your lived as long

Back in the day as people do now. I've got people in my family tree that lived to over 100 and many lived to their late 70s and 80s.

One example is my 3x great-grandfather who lived into his late 80s but he had four sons who were killed in their early twenties in the Civil War. Then many of his grandchildren lived into their eighties. Sure, the deaths in war seem to "shorten" the family lifespan but they all had the genes for very long lives. Oh, yeah - that same 3x great-grandfather remarried at 73 to a 28 year old woman and had a second family that was younger than some of his grandchildren!

Another 3x grandfather also lived into his eighties as did most of his children. Two of his grandchildren married (first cousins!) and ALL their thirteen children survived into at least their 70s and some into their 90s. That couple were my Mom's grandparents and she is now 95.

[pintobean]

7. I guess modern medicine is a waste of time.

[SHRED]

9. It has eliminated many childhood diseases

Not a waste of time.

[LisaL]

10. Exactly.

Which is why average survival age is much older.

[SHRED]

11. I understand that

The point of my post is misunderstood I think. Sadly.

The full article explains it pretty well.

[Chemisse]

12. I wonder if the life-prolonging effects of modern medicine,

such as antibiotics, insulin, emergency medicine, and so much more, is offset by increases in disease due to the modern diet and environment, such as diabetes and cancer.

[LisaL]

13. Life-prolonging effects of modern medicine resulted in average life span to be much longer than

before. Although apparently most of this is due to less people dying in childhood. If we make it out of childhood then it seems we pretty much have the same life expectancy as our ancestors.
I agree, it's probably because we are fatter and less active, and our environment is more polluted. So despite doctors trying to treat us, we are not living longer if we make it through early childhood.

[SHRED]

14. ^^THIS

Thank you

[Chemisse]

15. I understand that.

However, there are adults who are saved - all the time - who would be dead without modern medicine.

Therefore we would expect the life expectancy to be higher than that of our ancestors.

Since it apparently is not higher, there must be other factors which counteract the life-saving treatments given to adults.

On edit - I didn't see your last sentences when I posted. So yeah, so many things in modern life act to increase the chances of adult death.

Still, our lives are so much better than when we had to fear losing our children to diseases that we can now prevent or treat.

[sammythecat]

47. "fewer" -- Stannis Baratheon EOM

[Warpy]

58. True, unless we're women

Advances in obstetric medicine means that a lot more of us are living through childbirth, something that used to kill many of us off before we got out of our 20s. Going through old graveyards (as well as articles on archaeological digs) can be a sobering experience. The lot of a woman was to be pregnant every year, producing as many children as she could. Even without fatal complications of pregnancy and childbirth, this had a massive negative effect on her health. Add a little periodic malnutrition and waves of various plagues and you wonder how any of our ancestresses survived to 30.

Advanced obstetrics, contraception and abortion are all under attack by the farthest right patriarchal fundies. Both FLDS and Quiverful women routinely go through pregnancy and childbirth without medical care and both are firmly against contraception.

[Ilsa]

64. Not just in childhood, but much fewer died in childbirth.

Women used to bleed to death, die from infection, or die from complications of delivery at much higher rates a hundred years ago compared to now.

[Igel]

37. The article overstates its point. By far.

Livescience is usually pretty good. This isn't an example of that.

See below.

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

16. More of us now get to live.

More people are now able to live as long as they can.

I guess that's not a fair way to state it. Before modern medicine, people were still living as long as they could. Umm.

Perhaps you get my intended meaning, umm, and -- perhaps perhaps -- I should stop posting on the internets before the coffee really soaks in.

I certainly would not have survived to adulthood, in any earlier era. My second bee sting would have killed me. I'm always interested by people who romanticize some previous era. I ask them if they've ever had a life-threatening medical crisis and been narrowly saved by modern medicine. Those of us who are still alive today thanks to medicine, science, and technology are children of the modern age. We may not have made it, in earlier times.

Since this is semi-caffeinated waffling & blathering, I feel I should close with an uncertain or noncommittal "Umm."

So, umm.

[SHRED]

17. I never intended my OP to be a knock...

...on medicine.
I'm thankful for the help modern science brings us.

[MyshkinCommaPrince]

28. Yeah, sorry.

I wasn't challenging your post or issuing a rebuke. I started with one thought and then my semi-caffeinated brain kind of jumped, free-association style, to other thoughts I've had about similar topics.

It sort of seems like there's more to it than just declining infant mortality rate, though. More of us survive to adulthood, but once we're adults medicine does often help us live longer. Medicine helps provide a declining adult mortality rate, as well as the child mortality rate. So more and more people have the opportunity to live a natural human lifespan. Which maybe changes the meaning of "People are living longer, so we can't afford retirement!" to "There are too many people, and we can't afford them all!" But they can't come out and say that. It's hard to go full-on Planet Malthus without presenting yourself as an obvious villain.

Still free-associating a bit, I will add:

Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?

And, umm. I'll stop cluttering up your thread with nonsense-babble, and go read the linked article. Thanks for the link.

[Chemisse]

22. In general, allergies are more common now.

I don't know about bee stings specifically though.

So, maybe you would not have died from anaphylaxis 100 years ago. But then again, you could've died from complications due to strep throat (easily treatable now), or from polio or smallpox (vaccinations prevent this now).

It's a though-provoking study.

[Nye Bevan]

20. Actually, we are indeed living longer. Here is the change in life expectancy at age 10,

which strips out the effect of falling infant mortality:



https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-at-age-10?/life-expectancy-at-age-10=undefined

[True Dough]

35. This is more along the lines of what I suspected

It seems counter-intuitive that life spans haven't been extended over centuries with medical advances, so the chart you posted strikes me as accurate, or close to it. As mentioned, lifestyle factors, primarily obesity and sedentary existences, are taking a bite out of progress. At least smoking is down in the developed world!

But, yeah, we're no longer dying of many diseases and infections that once killed people in substantial numbers. That said, we keep being warned of outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and there have already been scares with things like Ebola, H1N1, SARS, etc. MRSA is a spectre that hangs over us.

[Helen Borg]

43. Extrapolating like that is nonsense!

[Nye Bevan]

54. OK, just look at the lines from 1950 to 2016, and ignore the extrapolation (nt)

[Helen Borg]

55. Yup.

[dofus]

21. I've learned that most people just don't understand this.

They think that if in some country or historical era the average life expectancy was, say 30, they think that people were dying of old age at that point. Not true. As this piece points out, infant and childhood mortality has a huge impact on life span.

I woman physician I knew once expressed the notion that most women used to die shortly after menopause, which was the main reason she was in favor of hormone replacement therapy for the rest of a woman's life after that. This conversation took place only a few weeks before it was revealed the hrt actually killed women faster than not doing it at all.

Which is not to slam modern medicine, but sometimes they get it wrong.

[Chemisse]

23. I've seen that a lot in historical fiction.

It's actually pretty annoying that people misunderstand this concept.

[PatSeg]

25. Working on my family tree,

I was surprised to find that so many of my ancestors lived to be much older than my parents and grandparents. People who died young were babies, small children, women in childbirth, and men in war. There was an occasional accident. Most of the families were quite large, so they were likely to have lost at least one infant or small child, often several.

This is when I realized that the "life expectancy" figures cited about past generations are skewed. It would probably be more accurate to calculate life expectancy of people who lived to adulthood.

[Igel]

42. Beyond a certain date

ages are guesses. Sometimes there are baptismal records, but often ancestors are poorly documented. There are also cases where father and son have the same name but the son's birth record's overlooked. Oops.

Otherwise, maximum lifespan's pretty consistent, with probably (just "probably&quot the same kinds of variations. Some genetic lines die off early; some are superlivers and go well into their 80s and 90s or beyond. And yes, "superliver" is the term that's used for these genetic outliers; sadly, you have to dig through pages of commercial spam after Google decides that you've misspelled two common words to form a rare word. (My IOS makes the same "you're a moron" assumption.)

[PatSeg]

53. Most of my 19th century ancestors

are extremely well documented with numerous sources available - censuses, marriage records, ship's logs, death records/cemeteries, church/baptismal records, family bibles, military records, etc. Though there would be slight variations of perhaps a year or two, overall they are pretty consistent. Many of them died in the early 20th century, so they often had death certificates and draft records as well.

If you go back to the 18th century and earlier, then the records tend to be more sketchy and inconsistent. As you mentioned, several generations of men with the same name (middle names weren't fashionable yet) make it more challenging. Fortunately with the men, there usually are military records and land deeds.

I think there are other important variants besides the genetic ones. There are differences in lifestyles. The more rural and often religious ancestors were inclined to live longer. When their descendants moved to urban areas, embracing some bad habits like drinking and smoking, they died younger than their parents and grandparents. Extreme poverty also was a contributing factor for some.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

27. OP Thread title is WRONG. We are living longer, as adults, accounting for infant mortality

For example, Canada, very similar to the US:

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-624-x/2014001/article/14009-eng.htm

In 2011, Canadians lived an average of 81.7 years. This is an increase of 24.6 years since 1921.
Nearly half of all the gains in life expectancy occurred in the period between 1921 and 1951, largely due to reduced infant mortality.
Reduced deaths from circulatory diseases account for most increases in life expectancy since 1951.

... centenarians were the second fastest growing age group according to the 2011 Census results.

[font size = "+1"]When you take out infant mortality, we are living about 9 years longer![/font]

in 1921, life expectancy at age 55 was 20 years. In other words, the average 55-year-old could expect to live to age 75. Today, a 55-year-old can expect to live an additional 29 years (to age 84), a gain of nine years over the past 90 years.

[nolabels]

33. And to continue the inquiry, are we living more intelligently?

Seems to me the world's biggest problem is everybody follows someone else's lead even when the idea is ignorant.

Did we get to this point by trial and error and or how much of it was a point of enlightenment

[Bernardo de La Paz]

45. US health care is NOT enlightened. It is bizarre and byzantine.

There are three lines on the chart that are askew compared to the others: France and USA.

France got an early start due to the prevalence of the Mediterranean diet and less rapid polluting industrialization. Similarly Sweden got an early start.

USA has a broken health care system that is degrading life expectancy. This is compounded by the oppression of minorities.

UK and Japan for example have nationalized health care systems that are essentially single-payer.

[nolabels]

52. U.S. Health care just like many other areas in our national society are based on predatory model.

Since there is not much wild frontier left to explore we have turned on exploiting others for our wherewithal.

[DirkGently]

29. KNR. n/t

[meaculpa2011]

30. A statistic is like a G String...

What it reveals is interesting, but what it conceals is vital.

[LongTomH]

32. Mmmm.....Good one!!!!

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. Since 1960, male US life expectancy at 65 has gone up from 13 to 18; female from 16 to 20

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-65.htm

[Bernardo de La Paz]

51. Exactly what the OP ignores and does not understand. . . . nt

[SHRED]

34. Lots of conversation here

I'm glad I stirred up the debate.

My main point in posting this was to address the notion that people have, in decades past, that people were dropping dead in their 40's, 50's and 60's.
This is the perception out there and it is wrong.

I appreciate the statistics others have posted.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

36. Having "stirred up the debate", would you consider correcting the OP in light of it?

The statistics fairly effectively refute the claim you started of without; you might want to edit in light of that?

[SHRED]

41. Did you read the entire article?

It talks specifically, with examples, of statements made about life expectancy and how misleading that can be.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

38. I understood what you were trying to convey.

I noticed long lives among my ancestors who were usually dirt farmers.

One ancestral family that I found had three children who lived to be adults... and six children who all died in infancy due to cholera and other illnesses.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

44. Your facts and thesis are wrong plus you have set up a straw man.

Nobody is saying "in decades past, that people were dropping dead in their 40's, 50's and 60's". Way to go knocking that scarecrow down

The facts are that the population is aging. Even when accounting for infant mortality. As shown in my post earlier.

Additionally, your thesis is wrong. [font size="+1"]Infant mortality has nothing to do with life expectancy at age 65.[/font] Logically.

No, we are not talking about the chance of an infant to live to the age of 65.

With regards to social security, we are talking about two things:

1) The life expectancy of a person who IS age 65 has increased substantially.

2) The ratio of people working to people drawing pensions is declining substantially.

[SHRED]

49. Oh yes they are

I've seen it in print and have heard people say things like, "In the 1800's you were lucky to make it past your 50's."

You haven't seen this??

[Igel]

48. Except that the perception may be skewed

but it wasn't wrong.

When you look at Egyptian burial grounds, for instance you find a hell of a lot of bodies from those who didn't make it though their 30s and 40s. If they weren't dropping dead, why were they buried? That helped make the average life expectancy in ancient Egypt what it was.

Infant mortality was high. Dispose of that, life expectancy increases.

But malnutrition, disease, accidents, war and other kinds of violence led to early deaths for a lot of people.

One part of the flawed perception is that "average" means "everybody." If the average age of death is 40, nobody should live to 41. That's foolishness, but not for the reasons in the OP. Mostly if you managed to get to 50 you would live to 70. For workers, the poor, they tended to drop like flies before that. When you get to 50, you have adult kids to help out and don't have to fend for young'ns, and soon after that you no longer have to fend for your parents (most likely), and things get a bit easier. Fertility drops of and so maternal mortality rates drop. You're no longer of military age. You've seen most diseases pass through at least once.

Even for the period that the OP says most increases in life expectancy were from childhood mortality decreases there was a good increase in expetation of life. That's increased since then. Fewer wars, less disease, etc.

Expectation of life =/= life expectancy at birth. I can look up my expectation of life now. Let's say I'm 55.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_11.pdf says for me it's 25.5. That's average. 50-50 chance I'll live longer. Above median family income, above median education says "better than that." Sedentary lifestyle says "below median." Father died at 85, not from natural causes; mother, at 88, is dying from Alzheimer's. No way to know how it'll average out for me.

My life expectancy at birth was far lower.

For many of the subgroups with lower expectations of life--African-Americans, for instance--some of that could be rectified through lower crime-related fatalities or better compliance with health-care directives. (It's not nearly so much access as it is just doing things that in general promote healthier outcomes or just following physician's instructions. This is one place "more education = better health, on average" comes into play in a big way.) Latinos have better longevity (and lower infant mortality and lower maternal mortality) for reasons that nobody's sorted out. Yet. They pretty much trash the "low income = early death" scenario that works for other groups, though, and forms the basis for a lot of political rhetoric.)

[pintobean]

62. Your OP's subject line is false

and the article is crap.
Yeah, that will usually stir thing up.

[LongTomH]

39. What has not been discussed in this thread is the impact of economic inequality on life expectancy

Life expectancy gap between rich and poor is growing

Life expectancy is increasing, which leads some to say that we should raise the eligibility age for retirement programs, but as Michael Fletcher explores at some length today, those gains have accrued overwhelmingly to society's higher socioeconomic status individuals. Working class life expectancy has largely stagnated, so an age-based cut to Medicare would in effect be a sharply regressive one.

The Economic Policy Institute: Growing disparities in life expectancy

Science Daily: Socioeconomic stresses could lower life expectancy, researcher says

[paleotn]

50. Exactly...

...since the US has the best healthcare money can buy. No money? No decent healthcare.

[ismnotwasm]

40. This is really interesting

I'm glad I read the article and the thread before I decided to post, because my first reaction was "what about all the women who died in Childbirth?"

But as the article points out "life expectancy" and "life span" are two different things.

Now I want to know, why hasn't it improved?

[paleotn]

46. Here's some interesting data on the subject....

https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy/

The second, interactive chart is very informative. It shows both the change in life expectancy from birth and by age group. Granted it's UK data, but their lifestyles are somewhat similar to Americans over the same time period. Life expectancy overall has improved, but most dramatically for birth thru mid to late 20's. The improvement is more modest in older age groups. What's really interesting is the change in spread of life expectancies between the age groups from 1845 to 2011. Today, it seems, life expectancy for the majority of age groups is converging on low to mid 80's. It was much more spread out in 1845.

[llmart]

56. Anyone who has done extensive genealogy......

will tell you that there doesn't seem to be much of a difference.

In my family tree, I've got records for my grandparents, my great grandparents and my great-great grandparents and I'm always surprised that many of them lived well into their 80's even though my parents didn't. My parents were born in 1911, their parents in the 1880's, etc. The youngest at which one of them died was 78! So, I have to ask myself, why is everyone so excited about the fact that baby boomers my age (late 60's) are going to live to 90?

The other thing I found in my family's genealogy are a few deaths of babies, but women had many more pregnancies back then too.

It's all very fascinating.

By the way, I really don't want to live to be 90

[HockeyMom]

60. Your age and agree with you on that one

Maybe it's just the younger generation who like that because they cannot see the forest for the trees This is where we get into the Quality versus Quantity of life.

My Uncle was a twin born in 1924. My Mom was the only other sibling. His brother died in the crib next to him during the night at 1 year old. Neither were sick. His death certificate called it Crib Death. Today it would be called SIDS. Modern medicine can prevent this? His brother lived to be 69. He refused to undergo chemo at his age. Uncle said he preferred death to constant medical treatment. My Mom passed at 74. She had a DNR in her Living Will. "I do not wish to become a Vegetable in some Science Experiment to see how long medicine can keep me alive". Both Uncles deaths and my Mom's would certainly skew statistics; choice of death in two cases.

llmart, I too have done my family genealogy going back centuries. In my family at least there must be some genetic fertility issue. Children didn't die young, they just didn't have very many to begin with. The few they had survived.

Sorry, I will pass on living into my 90's. I feel if I make it to my 70's, only a few years away, that will be fine with me. Too many people in today's society cannot accept death which is a part of life. I, too, do not want to be a Science Experiment in old age.

[llmart]

65. I'll be 70 in less than 3 years...

I have siblings and friends in their 70's and many of them say that if they are diagnosed with something serious they won't accept treatment. Most of us feel we've lived very good lives and that if we've reached 70 it wouldn't be worth the lesser quality of life that would come with treatments. I've always been very, very healthy and have taken care of myself, so I think if I had to face all that comes with some of these treatments, I'd rather leave this life without spending my remaining days chasing cures.

I actually feel that I've done what I was sent here to do. I wasn't one of those who put off things until "someday". I would leave two marvelous adult offspring and one grandchild. I have a wealth of wonderful memories.

You may already know this, but author Carolyn Heilbrun always said she'd take her own life once she reached 70. She wrote about it in one of her books. Then she reached 70 and I believe was in good health, so she changed the age (I hope I'm remembering this correctly), but I think she did eventually end her life so she wouldn't live until she was incapacitated. I think I'll get that book out and reread it. First I'll have to search my library's catalogue to see what the title was!

[roamer65]

59. More are seeing the maximum expected lifespan.

Average life expectancy in the 1900's was around 47 years. The advent of antibiotics greatly increased that average.

I know 100 percent for sure that I would have been dead 4 years ago if it weren't for modern medical science.

[bhikkhu]

61. Deceptive article

There is a difference between "maximum lifespan" and "average lifespan"; I haven't been aware of any realistic arguments that the maximum human lifespan has increased over the ages, so the article, to me, is arguing against a position that is largely absent of supporters.

What it does do is poorly conflate "maximum" and "average". Most people believe that average lifespans have increased, based on a large amount of research on the subject. It is very true that average lifespans are skewed by infant mortality, but that's been common knowledge for ages. Studies regularly deal with that by detailing the average years a population of a given age did or could expect to live.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html

is a good example. Average lifespans are ten to twenty years longer since about 1850. And it depends very much on the historical circumstances and where you look, but death at an average age of 40-50 for those who survived childhood was a common fact through much of human history.

Graveyard surveys are one good source, particularly those of common people, rather than the wealthy and privileged. I read a book awhile back (don't recall the name) where a precolumbian Aztec graveyard was surveyed, finding an average age of death for adults of about 42. Another book "Light in the Dark Ages: The Rise and Fall of San Vincenzo Al Volturno" surveyed the graveyard there in use for a little over 100 years, and found the average age of adult skeletons to be 35. Viking graveyards have also been well surveyed, and average age of adults is typically in the 40's. There is no shortage of research and evidence to support the "common myth" supposedly busted by the OP.

[yeoman6987]

63. They've done a great job marketing the "Americans are living longer" BS

Ask anyone on the street and they will say that sentence. It will take a miracle to reverse the belief.

[JanMichael]

66. I posted a piece on this years ago. If one lived past 35 they typically made it quite far.

35 is the magic point where childhood illnesses and youthful occupations (war) and idiocy (you know "hey watch this" and hot-dogging fast horse and car wrecks) typically end. Once that hurdle is passed people since the at least the 1700's then make it to around 70 or 80. Actuarial tables have shown this since the 1800's.

The rather modest gains in the last century are primarily drug induced additional years, things like social security and healthcare, and stints.