The uncertainty of the future development of life expectancy

At the same time, Biogerontology (the science of the physiology and biology of aging) has been making remarkable progress. According to leading researchers, fundamental processes underlying human aging are now understood and, in principle, druggable. So, the answer to the BBC question might very well be: ‘No, the Party hasn't even started!’

There are numerous arguments suggesting that life expectancy will increase at a significantly slower pace (or possibly decrease) in the future. Many arguments were presented in detail in a talk by one of the authors at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the German Society of Actuaries1. Here, we highlight just one example: seniors typically suffer from multiple diseases simultaneously. ‘Normal medical progress’ develops and improves cures for individual diseases. However, if one cures the disease that would have killed an 85-year-old next year, they often have several other diseases that might kill them one year later. This appears to be a structural barrier for a significant reduction in mortality among seniors, without which a further significant increase in life expectancy is practically impossible as the gain in life expectancy from curing a specific disease diminishes as population ages. In fact, this is a key driver for a famous result by Olshansky et al.2 who essentially claim that the ‘speed of medical progress’ would need to rise ever faster to create a further steady increase in life expectancy. The assumptions of their model would, however, no longer hold if the fundamental processes of aging are modified.

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