Will we live to be 100 years old?
Me, no. Maybe for you and the younger generation the chances are likely a yes.
The rapid advances in technology will likely enhance this process. Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that man may reach immortality by 2045. It’s an incredible, fascinating and optimistic thought.
Nevertheless, the Economist projects there will be more than 1 million centenarians by 2100, they write
MOST countries celebrate the survival of a citizen for a century with a letter from a president or monarch, or even some cash. This is just about feasible at the moment, when centenarians are still comparatively rare, but it will not be the case for much longer. The chart below, drawn from UN data, shows projections for the five countries that will have more than a million centenarians by the end of the century. China will get there first in 2069, 90 years after its one-child policy was implemented.
I don’t know how the UN came up with these projections.
What I know is that:
The US has the most centenarians 70,490 as of September 2010. Japan has 44,449. (Wikipedia.org) Following charts from Google's Public Data
Life expectancy has been expanding as more people have been enabled to trade freely.
Trade brings about the innovation in technology which has vastly contributed to this extended lifespan. Of course increasing wealth from trade has also been a factor.
Yet if people will indeed grow older as the UN or Kurzweil predicts, then there will be further strains on current Bismarckian government welfare system. This means radical changes will confront the current governments founded on the industrial age society.
Also despite longer lifespans which should add to the global population, I don’t believe in the Malthusian crap about “peak” resources. Under free markets, people’s ingenuity will prevail.
At the end of the day, the sustainability of longer lifespans will ultimately depend on the state of free markets and economic freedom.
