Palacios Tomas, Solari Catherine, Bains William
1 Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, United Kingdom .
2 Rufus Scientific Ltd. , Royston, Herts, United Kingdom .
Rejuvenation Res. 2015 Jun;18(3):234-44. doi: 10.1089/rej.2014.1629. Epub 2015 May 26.
Life expectancy has increased continuously for at least 150 years, due at least in part to improving life conditions for the majority of the population. A substantial part of this historical increase is due to decreases in early life mortality. In this article, we analyze the longevity of four privileged sets of adults who have avoided childhood mortality and lived a life more similar to the modern middle class. Our analysis is focused on writers and musicians from the 17th through the 21st centuries. We show that their average age at death increased only slightly between 1600 and 1900, but in the 20th century increased at around 2 years/decade. We suggest that this confirms that modern life span extension is driven by delay of death in older life rather than avoidance of premature death. We also show that productive life span, as measured by writing and composition outputs, has increased in parallel with overall life span in these groups. Increase in age of death is confirmed in a group of the minor British aristocracy and in members of the US Congress from 1800 to 2010. We conclude that both life span and productive life span are increasing in the 20th and early 21st century, and that the modern prolongation of life is the extension of productive life and is not the addition of years of disabling illness to the end of life.
至少150年来，预期寿命一直在持续增长，这至少部分归因于大多数人口生活条件的改善。这一历史性增长的很大一部分是由于早期死亡率的下降。在本文中，我们分析了四组享有特权的成年人的长寿情况，他们避免了儿童期死亡，过着与现代中产阶级更为相似的生活。我们的分析集中在17世纪至21世纪的作家和音乐家身上。我们发现，他们的平均死亡年龄在1600年至1900年间仅略有增加，但在20世纪则以大约每十年2岁的速度增长。我们认为，这证实了现代寿命延长是由老年期死亡延迟而非避免过早死亡所驱动的。我们还表明，以写作和作曲产出衡量的生产寿命在这些群体中与总体寿命同步增长。1800年至2010年间，一小群英国小贵族和美国国会议员的死亡年龄也出现了增长。我们得出结论，在20世纪和21世纪初，寿命和生产寿命都在增加，而且现代寿命延长是生产寿命的延长，而不是在生命末期增加多年的失能疾病时间。
