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by harperlee 2556 days ago
It was quite surprising for me to read (in Angus Deaton’s The Great Escape - Nobel laureate) that most of the advances on living longer that we have achieved are basically focused on not dying young (baby, infant, adolescent); but that the overall limit has been fixed in its place since hundreds of years ago.

Look at the shapes of this and to what do they converge:

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2017/08/Survival-Curves-U...

(That comes from this article by the way: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy)

Im trying to find a chart of the evolution of age-specific mortality rate that very clearly shows that we have a mortality plateau up until about 30-35 years, and then the rate increases linearly. It is quite humbling.

EDIT: This is the best I found: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerardo_Chowell/publica...

It is from Canada. The aforementioned book shows time series of several countries and periods, and helps driving the point home that (non-intentional) adult mortality has been more or less fixed since a long time ago.