"Seventy-two Is the New 30": Why Are We Living So Much Longer?

Charles Q. Choi

The death rate in industrialized countries has dropped so much in the last century or so that, for example, a 72-year-old in Japan has the same chances of dying as a preindustrial 30-year-old did, or does, a new study says.

"In other words," the researchers write, " ... 72 is the new 30."

Humans nowadays survive much longer than our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, which rarely live past 50. Even hunter-gathererswho often lack the advanced nutrition, modern medicine, and other benefits of industrialized livinghave twice the life expectancy at birth as wild chimpanzees.

So what's changed in us since the days of our ape ancestors? Are we living so much longer mainly because of changes in our lifestyles or because of genetic mutationsin other words, evolution?

(Related: "Longevity Genes Found; Predict Chances of Reaching a Hundred.")

To find out how we got to this advanced state, the study team compared death rates in industrialized countries with those in modern-day hunter-gatherer groups, whose lifestyles more closely mirror those of early modern humans.

The researchers found that the mortality rate at younger agesduring the first couple decades of lifein the industrialized world is now about 200 times lower overall than in today's hunter-gatherer groups.

"We have a greater distance in mortality levels between today's lowest-mortality nations and hunter-gatherers than there is between hunter-gatherers and chimpanzees," said study leader Oskar Burger, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany.

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"Seventy-two Is the New 30": Why Are We Living So Much Longer?