Longevity News and Trends in the United States and Abroad

Over the past century, there have been tremendous increases in longevity in the United States and most other developed countries. If these trends continue, the costs of paying for public programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will escalate at a startling rate with the aging of the "baby boomer" generation. A meeting titled "Living Longer and Paying the Price?" was organized to consider whether current trends in longevity will continue at the current pace, accelerate, or decelerate as a result of public health problems such as obesity and infectious diseases. Further, speakers presented their views on covering the costs of public and private programs for future generations of older adults.

In addition to improving quality of life, higher subjective wellbeing leads to fewer health problems and higher productivity, making subjective wellbeing a focal issue among researchers and governments. However, it is difficult to estimate how happy people were during previous centuries. Here we show that a method based on the quantitative analysis of natural language published over the past 200 years captures reliable patterns in historical subjective wellbeing. Using sentiment analysis on the basis of psychological valence norms, we compute a national valence index for the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Italy, indicating relative happiness in response to national and international wars and in comparison to historical trends in longevity and gross domestic product. We validate our method using Eurobarometer survey data from the 1970s and demonstrate robustness using words with stable historical meanings, diverse corpora (newspapers, magazines and books) and additional word norms. By providing a window on quantitative historical psychology, this approach could inform policy and economic history.

Understanding long-range trends in longevity and disability is useful for projecting the likely impact of the baby-boom generation on long-term care utilization and spending. We examine changes in active life expectancy in the United States from 1982 to 2011 for white and black adults ages sixty-five and older. For whites, longevity increased, disability was postponed to older ages, the locus of care shifted from nursing facilities to community settings, and the proportion of life at older ages spent without disability increased. In contrast, for blacks, longevity increases were accompanied by smaller postponements in disability, and the percentage of remaining life spent active remained stable and well below that of whites. Older black women were especially disadvantaged in 2011 in terms of the proportion of years expected to be lived without disability. Public health measures directed at older black adults-particularly women-are needed to offset impending pressures on the long-term care delivery system as the result of population aging.

Trend of Longevity in the United States

Trend of Longevity in the United States

Thanks to technological and scientific advances, by 2020 about 17% of the U.S. population will be 65 or older. That means 20 million more elders than there are today, according to the U.S. government's Administration on Aging (Pratt, 2001). This longevity trend could transform American culture profoundly. We may be living longer lives, but Americans are having a more difficult time with aging than ever before. Our youth-oriented culture has made people fearful of aging, feeling invisible or worthless rather than respected and wise, unlike the Japanese and Native Americans, where elders are treated with love, respect, and deference. Many elderly in our culture are bitter with loneliness, regret, and fear of what the future holds. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, a rabbi, former Professor of Religion at Temple University, and a spiritual seeker, went on a vision quest at the age of 60 in response to a developing awareness of his fear of aging. He elegantly describes his struggle with his fears of getting old: Something unknown was stirring in my depths that left me feeling anxious and out of sorts whenever I was alone. To avoid these upsetting feelings, I threw myself back into my work with a renewed resolve not to yield to the depression. Feeling alone and vulnerable, I feared becoming a geriatric case who follows the predictable pattern of retirement, painful physical diminishment, a rocking chair existence in a nursing home, and the eventual dark and inevitable end to my life (Schachter-Shalomi 1999, p. 1). His personal journey led him to focus on the value of elderhood and how he could turn aging into the most meaningful, truly wonderful time of life. He set out to create a radically different aging process, characterized by adventure, passion, mystery, and fulfillment. Rabbi Zalman, as he is known, developed the concept of and an organization called Spiritual Eldering Institute. He uses the word sage-ing as a verb to denote that it is not something that happens to you; rather, you must be active in producing it yourself. Developing mature characteristics and qualities is the result of many small choices made throughout a lifetime. Choosing, rather than dreading, maturity gives birth to what some people call the conscious aging movement. Older people in society have to want to and to contribute. The question arises, what is the purpose of elder years, and what is necessary for society? Rabbi Zalman offers many insights regarding the possible role of the elderly: * Application of developed intuition * Focus on expansion of consciousness * Role model for how to live your values * Contribution of a developed, wise presence * Mentoring the young, sharing information and knowledge Imagine what would happen if the United States sent an elder corps into trouble spots (war-tom areas), not with weapons but with their own being and bodies. Imagine that this corps of elderly people communicated with the elders who have lost grandchildren in battle and mourned and grieved with them, and say we must stop this. …

Modeling mortality and longevity risk presents challenges because of the impact of improvements at different ages and the existence of common trends. Modeling cause of death mortality rates is even more challenging since trends and age effects are more diverse. Despite this, successfully modeling these mortality rates is critical to assessing risk for insurers issuing longevity risk products including life annuities. Longevity trends are often forecasted using a Lee-Carter model. A common stochastic trend determines age-based improvements. Other approaches fit an age-based parametric model with a time series or vector autoregression for the parameters. Vector Error Correction Models (VECM), developed recently in econometrics, include common stochastic long-run trends. This paper uses a stochastic parameter VECM form of the Heligman-Pollard model for mortality rates, estimated using data for circulatory disease deaths in the United States over a period of 50 years. The model is then compared with a version of the Lee-Carter model and a stochastic parameter ARIMA Heligman-Pollard model. The VECM approach proves to be an improvement over the Lee-Carter and ARIMA models as it includes common stochastic long-run trends.

American Heart Association's 2024 Impact Goal: Every Person Deserves the Opportunity for a Full, Healthy Life.

Educational attainment level has long been a strong predictor of adult health and longevity in the United States. Interestingly, the association between education and these outcomes has strengthened in recent decades. Since the 1980s, higher-educated adults have experienced favorable trends in health and longevity, while lower-educated adults have experienced stagnation or unfavorable trends. Studies have provided important clues about why the association between education and health and longevity has strengthened over time. However, explanations remain incomplete and contested. This article discusses key findings and debates about why the association has become stronger and offers recommendations to advance robust explanations. Two key recommendations call for a fundamental shift in how researchers conceptualize and study the increasingly strong association. These include (a) reconsidering which education groups should be viewed as normative in analyses of the trends and (b) elevating attention on contexts, institutions, and actors that have had an outsized influence on the trends.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, stagnating life expectancy trends were reported in some high-income countries (HICs). Despite previous evidence from country-specific studies, there is a lack of comparative research that provides a broader perspective and challenges existing assumptions. This study aims to examine longevity trends and patterns in six English-speaking countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States) by combining period and cohort perspectives and to compare them with other HICs. Using data from the Human Mortality and World Health Organization Mortality Databases, we estimated partial life expectancy, lifespan inequality and cohort survival differences for 1970-2021, as well as the contribution of causes of death to the gap in life expectancy between English-speaking countries and the average for other HICs in 2017-19. In the pre-pandemic period, the increase in life expectancy slowed in all English-speaking countries, except Ireland, mainly due to stagnating or rising mortality at young-middle ages. Relative to other HICs, those born in Anglophone countries since the 1970s experienced relative survival disadvantage, largely attributable to injuries (mainly suicides) and substance-related mortality (mainly poisonings). In contrast, older cohorts enjoyed advantages for females in Australia and Canada and for males in all English-speaking countries except the United States. Although future gains in life expectancy in wealthy societies will increasingly depend on reducing mortality at older ages, adverse health trends at younger ages are a cause for concern. This emerging and avoidable threat to health equity in English-speaking countries should be the focus of further research and policy action.

An examination of past human mortality trends revealed that the mean longevity of birth cohorts from 1740 to 1900 for United States of America (U.S.) Congressional Representatives exhibited oscillations that coincided with the 9- to 12-year sunspot cycle. Cohort mean longevities were 2-3 years greater during times of low sunspot activity than at peak activity. This phenomenon was confirmed in data from members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom Parliament and from University of Cambridge alumni. An additional longevity oscillation with a longer period was visible in the data and may also be related to sunspot cycles. The amplitude and frequency modulations in the longevity and sunspot oscillations aligned when a 20-year phase shift was incorporated. This shift requires the existence of a lag between solar changes and the affected birth cohorts. Several possible causes of the effect are discussed, in particular: radiation on primordial germ cells in developing embryos; influenza epidemics and pandemics; and weather. The size of the longevity oscillation requires that the solar effect must be considered in studies that examine longevity trends and risk estimation.

BackgroundLongevity is the amount of time breeding females stay active in a herd by avoiding death or culling because of illness or reproductive failure. This is a trait of economic relevance in commercial small ruminant breeding herds as it affects lifetime reproductive output. The purpose of this study was to determine if breed of meat goat influences breeding doe survival rates and cumulative reproductive performance under semi-intensive management.ResultsBoer (n = 132), Kiko (n = 92) and Spanish (n = 79) does were evaluated for longevity trends and cumulative kid production. The herd was managed on humid subtropical pasture. Does had the chance to complete 2 to 6 production years. Survival curves were analyzed for 2 culling methods. The actual culling practice removed does after two failures to wean a kid. An alternative culling protocol removed doe records after the first failure to wean a kid. Kid production traits analyzed across herd life were the total number of kids weaned and cumulative kid weight weaned to the 2-, 3-, and 5-year stayability endpoints. Most (82%) doe exits were illness-related under the actual culling method. Reproductive failure represented 51% of doe exits under the alternative culling protocol. Boer does had greater survival declines (P < 0.01) from 2 to 6 years of herd life compared with Kiko and Spanish under both culling protocols. Boer does had lower stayability rates (P < 0.01) at each year endpoint for both culling protocols. Under the alternative protocol, over 50% of Boer does failed to complete 2 years, whereas over 50% of Kiko and Spanish does successfully completed 4 years. Boer does had lower (P < 0.01) total number of kids weaned and cumulative weight weaned through each stayability endpoint compared with Kiko and Spanish.ConclusionBoer does had low stayability and cumulative kid production rates compared with Kiko and Spanish does. Poor health was the primary driver of does exiting the herd. Kiko and Spanish does did not differ for longevity and lifetime performance indicators.

We investigate state-level age-specific mortality trends based on the United States Mortality Database (USMDB) published by the Human Mortality Database. In tandem with looking at the longevity experience across all the states, we also consider a collection of socio-demographic, economic, and educational covariates that correlate with mortality trends. To obtain smoothed mortality surfaces for each state, we implement the machine learning framework of Multi-Output Gaussian Process regression (Huynh &amp; Ludkovski, AAS, 2021) on targeted groupings of 3–6 states. Our detailed exploratory analysis shows that the mortality experience is highly inhomogeneous across states in terms of respective Age structures. We moreover document multiple divergent trends between best and worst states, between Females and Males, and between younger and older Ages. The comparisons across the 50+ fitted models offer opportunities for rich insights about drivers of mortality in the U.S. and are visualized through numerous figures and an online interactive dashboard.