[extropy-chat] Life expectancy vs. maximum life span

[Alfio Puglisi]

After reading many posts on health care I became a bit curious about the 
actual life expectancy. In particular, I had heard from multiple sources 
that the maximum human life span has always been around 80 years or so, 
and that the current increasing in life expectancy is only due to lower 
death rates during birth or similar thing.

The wikipedia entry on the subject led me to this report by the (US) 
National Center for Health Statistics: 
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus04trend.pdf

The interesting bit is table 27 (at page 77 of the pdf file), which lists 
life expectancy at various ages from 1900 to present (life expectancy at 
different ages is defined as follows: at birth, it's the number of years 
you can expect to live. At a later point, it's the number of years you can 
expect to have ahead of you. For example, if at 30 years you have a life 
expectancy of 45 years, it means that in average people like you die at 
75).

According to the table, life expectancy at birth increased by 30 years 
1900-2002, by 9 years 1950-2002, and by 2 years 1990-2002. This is a large 
and obvious improvement.

For people who are 65 years old, life expectancy only increased by about 4 
years 1950-2002, and by 1 year 1990-2000.

For people who are 75 years old, the gain from 1990 to 2000 is just 6 
months.

It is apparent that the range is "compressing": more people who in the 
past would have died young live to an older age, but the maximum age 
doesn't really go up. So the average goes up, but the trend is misleading.

Comments?

Alfio