The maximum length of human life probably hasn’t increased much since the Stone Age, Kohn said. Modern medicine, improved sanitation and better nutrition have enabled many more people to live from birth to ten years of age, but have done little to add anything to the life span of older people.
“Life expectancy at 65 has been affected very little by progress. Maybe it’s gone up a year or two in the last 80 years, he said” (From “Adult’s Life: No Longer Now Than Stone Age Man’s Life” in Spectator, March 1978. Reprinted by permission of the University of Iowa Press).
Although not relative to the issues under consideration here, it is worth-while to point out two places where the article skirts dangerously close to the misuse of statistics. First, while the maximum length of human life has perhaps not changed much since the Stone Age, as asserted, the average length of human life has probably increased enormously. It increased by 59 percent in the present century alone. Second, life expectancy at 65 has actually gone up more than “a year or two” in the last 80 years: it has gone up about 3.3 years, which gains in impressiveness when you consider that this is a 28 percent increase over the life expectancy of 11.9 years at age 65 in 1900.
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