Take Our Aging Quiz
How much do you know about growing older? Is it true that your heredity will determine how long you live? Is it false that your vocabulary will grow as you age? Test yourself on the basic facts and the latest research on aging.
Click on each link below to see the answer to the True-False question.
False.
Life expectancy is up by almost 40 percent. Whereas the average American born in 1900 could expect to live just 47 years, a child born today has a life expectancy of almost 78. The citizens of 28 other countries live even longer, on average.
During the first half of the 20th century, industrialized nations achieved better control over infectious diseases. Together with better nutrition, this drastically reduced the number of deaths during infancy and childhood. In mid-century, antibiotics began to decrease adult deaths, as well, and after 1960, deaths from cardiovascular disease also started to decline. All these changes dramatically extended life expectancy.
Experts disagree about what’s likely to happen in the future. Epidemiologist S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago, for example, predicts that, barring major medical advances, life expectancy for Americans in the 21st century won’t top 90 years. Others, such as Duke University research scientist James W. Vaupel, see no reason why the upward trend should stop any time soon. They argue that in developed nations over the past 160 years, life expectancy has increased at the rate of about three months per year. Those gradual gains will continue, they believe, until in about 2060 in some countries, the average person can expect to live to 100.
“The Future of Human Life Expectancy.” Research Highlights in the Demography and Economics of Aging, March, 2006.
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““Study Indicates No Natural Limit To Life Expectancy.” Duke University, Science Daily, May 10, 2002.
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