There are no excuses for delaying the retirement age, because strange as it may seem, life expectancy has begun to slow down, or at least that is what the latest report from the US Center for Health Statistics publishes. Life expectancy there has fallen from 77.9 to 77.8 from 2008 to 2009.
It is something that contrasts enormously with other published studies. Some point out that in rich countries life expectancy had been increasing by three months per year since the mid-19th century and others that babies born in 2060 would have a life expectancy of up to 100 years.
Scientists show us both sides of the coin, but what data should we stick to? It is best to be cautious… It is not the first time that experts have warned of a possible decrease in life expectancy. One of the first studies that predicted this was the one published in the ‘New England Journal of Medicine’ in 2005. It pointed to the obesity epidemic among children as the cause of the decrease in life expectancy, which would cause a reduction of between 4 and 9 months in life expectancy.
And this is something that the World Health Organization also warned about in its day. Margaret Chan, general director of the organization, was emphatic in stating that the current generation “could be the first in a long time to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.” The Harvard School of Public Health demonstrated this in the latest study they published last September. They spent 20 years collecting data to reach the conclusion that “being overweight in middle age can reduce the possibility of having a long and healthy life by 79%.”
The conclusions of the report of the Center for Health Statistics
- But curiously, the report that we mentioned at the beginning does not refer to obesity as a cause of decreased life expectancy, which does not mean that it is not also. Many attribute the decline in life expectancy in general to the current crisis, but warn that there are many other causes…
- Advances in medicine have helped enormously to overcome a multitude of diseases that once meant certain death. Thus, deaths from problems related to the heart, cancer or diabetes have decreased. But these advances do not serve to overcome other types of problems. The number of people who succumb to respiratory diseases, kidney disease, Alzheimer’s, hypertension has increased to which must be added a hopeless fact: the increase in suicides. The rate has grown by 2.4% since the start of the crisis.
- According to this report, the average life expectancy has decreased by one month, but this average can vary enormously depending on the social situation. “Between the richest and the poorest in the same city, there may be a difference in life expectancy of 20 years,” warn the experts who, faced with this panorama, invite us to reflect.
- These differences are extrapolated to higher levels. Abysmal and terrifying differences between rich and poor countries. In Japan, life expectancy reaches 82.6 years, and in Mozambique, only 42.1.
- According to the WHO, this inequality could be alleviated in a certain sense, increasing the average life expectancy by five years, if what they consider to be the five main risk factors for health were eliminated, which are: child malnutrition, unsafe sex, lack of drinking water and sanitation, alcohol consumption and high blood pressure.
And what happens in Spain?
- Well, in Spain, according to experts, just the opposite occurs. Life expectancy only increases. Here the average is 81 years, a figure that has been increasing in four years since 1991. However, there is a danger that this increase will reach a ceiling, and this danger is due to the progressive increase in obesity in our country. A year ago a study was published warning that Spanish adolescents are the most obese in the world…
- And it is that, oddly enough, the crisis makes it more difficult to maintain the ideal weight, and not only because of the inactivity of standing still, but for something, if possible, much sadder. The most disadvantaged groups have it much more difficult to access healthy food.
- According to a study carried out by the Barcelona Medical Research Institute, people who wish to follow a Mediterranean diet, with less fat, more vegetables and more fruit, can spend an average of 7.9 euros per day. More than what it costs to eat a less healthy diet that means an average cost of 6.7 euros. Currently in Spain there are families who see fruit and vegetables as a luxury that they can only have on a few occasions a month.