[extropy-chat] increasing life expectancy

[spike]

Here's an interesting article in of all oddball places, chess news.  The
author is a British statistician as well as a chess grandmaster.  He has
some interesting insights regarding the increase in life expectancy.  That
map is interesting too: life expectancy is longest in Sweden, Canada, Japan,
Iceland and Australia.  Check it out:

 

 

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3064

 

But look at what has happened in recent decades: in 1981, the life
expectancy (at birth) was 70.8 years for men and 76.8 years for women. In
2001, it was 75.7 years for men and 80.5 years for women; an increase of
2.45 years per decade for men and 1.85 years per decade for women. The
average for the whole population was more than two years per decade - higher
than it was 50 years ago. Thus, far from the rise in life expectancy tailing
off, it has actually accelerated.

Why is this? There is of course much discussion on this point, but in my
view it can be summarised by saying that life has got much better in the
past 50 years. Just to take one example, consider air pollution. When I was
young, coal was the main fuel used for heating, and this caused a great deal
of indoor air pollution. Smoking was far more common than today (chess
clubs, I recall, being particularly bad). Outdoor air pollution was also
much worse. I missed the 1952 London smog which killed 4,000 people, but I
remember vividly the last serious London smog in December 1962. The sun
appeared only as a pale heatless disc during the day; going outdoors would
make you cough and choke and it wasn't much better inside the house. The
weather was freezing cold and supplies of fuel ran out. My whole family
huddled in the kitchen with the cooker turned full on, as this was the only
available source of heat. I played chess listlessly. 

The improvement since then has been remarkable; measured by the
concentration of many of the most important pollutants, London air is now
cleaner than it has ever been since the 16th century. There are of course
many other factors involved than air pollution, but in almost all areas the
story is the same; things have got much better. We should of course not be
complacent and it will doubtless require continuing efforts to maintain this
progress. But in general it is hard to complain about the improvements of
the last 50 years.

 

 

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