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by AcerbicZero
2513 days ago
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Not to derail whatever point you're trying to make but its important to note if you use WW2 as the middle point, you're splitting the data between a pre-penicillin world and post-penicillin world. If anything I'm amazed that its only a 16% increase after such a massive change. |
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To take a contrived and simplified example, imagine a hypothetical world in which everybody dies on their 90th birthday by default, but a handful of diseases cause 25% of the population to die on their 30th birthday instead. That brings the average life expectancy to 73.75y.
Now imagine a bunch of medical breakthroughs bring the 30-year-old mortality rate down from 25% to 7%. That enormous difference brings the average life expectancy to 85.45y.
That's in increase in life expectancy just shy of 16%, despite the fact that it comes from a 72% reduction in 30-year-old mortality rates.
That's obviously a massive oversimplification, and real distributions look different, but it illustrates the problem with just looking at average life expectancies; it makes it look like everyone's life span has just been scaled up by 16%, which is not the case. If you look at it from the perspective of, "what are the chances my life will be cut short by some preventable disease?", the magnitude of the change is much greater. Some of that change is due to very cheap innovations like bread-mold-as-antibiotic, and some of it is due to very expensive innovations like organ transplants. Either way, I for one am glad those days are over, despite the appealing economic simplicity.