According to the latest predictions, in 2030 South Korean women will exceed the 90-year-old barrier in terms of life expectancy. Specifically, South Korean girls born in 2030 will have a 60% chance of reaching 90.8 years , and boys will have a life expectancy of 84.1 years , also the longest in the world for people of their gender. They are the results of an exhaustive analysis carried out by scientists from Imperial College London and published in The Lancet magazine in which data from the World Health Organization were used to develop 21 statistical models using Bayesian statistics.
In general, the results predict that life expectancy will increase in all the countries studied, but the increase in South Korea will surely be the most spectacular. According to the authors of the work, this is because both in this country and in Japan, currently a leader in life expectancy, the economic status of the population has increased and access to education, child nutrition is much more complete, there is a health system that guarantees access to health and, in addition, South Koreans tend to have lower blood pressure than people in Western countries.
Spain is also one of the countries with the highest life expectancy in the world and, with respect to 2010, that of girls born in 2030 will increase 3.24 years and they will occupy fourth place on the list (88.07 years), preceded by South Korea, France and Japan. For children, the increase with respect to 2010 will be more than 4 years, they will have a life expectancy of 83.7 years and will occupy the seventh position in the classification of the countries analyzed.
The keys to longevity: nutrition and universal access to health
One of the striking results is that in the United States life expectancy will hardly increase, and this will continue to be one of the lowest of the so-called ‘developed countries’, ranking on a par with other middle-income states such as Mexico or the Czech Republic. According to the authors, this is an effect of the enormous social inequalities that exist in this country, in which there is no public health system , infant and maternal mortality rates are higher, as well as the number of homicides and the index of body mass. In fact, in some social groups in the US, life expectancy will not only stagnate, but may even decline in the coming years.
Live more than 100 years
After one of his trips around the world, the journalist Dan Buettner coined the term ‘ Blue zones’ to refer to four specific points on the planet where a good number of people exceed the 100-year barrier and, in addition They do it with a very good physical shape and free of disabilities.
These places are Sardinia, in Italy; Okinawa, in Japan, the Nicoya Peninsula, in Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, in California. The keys to reaching 100 years ? Buettner spent almost seven years studying the ways of life and peculiarities of each of these areas and captured them in his best seller “The Blue Areas .” And, there are no recipes, because each place has very different customs, but he observed some key characteristics: a diet rich in legumes and vegetables , having an active life, and also paying attention to the mind: many of these regions are characterized by respect towards the elderly , who have an active social life and feel useful to the rest of their fellow citizens.
Challenges for the future
The authors of the study published in The Lancet caution that their results are based on predictions that take into account current conditions in the countries studied. Obviously, if, for example, the universal health system were to disappear in one of them, life expectancy would very possibly be reduced, and vice versa.
In addition, the aging of the population also poses great challenges for the future: guaranteeing medical and social care services that allow people to reach old age with quality of life , and pay attention to public pension systems. The authors also suggest that it would be necessary to study the delay in retirement age , a very topical debate at the moment in countries like ours.
