Age Wise
How Long Can Humans Really Live?
Either we have a natural shelf life, or mortality plateaus and the sky’s the limit
If you can just make it to 105, your odds of surviving each subsequent year of life seem to level off at about 50/50. That much scientists largely agree on. Yet one of the oldest arguments in longevity research is whether this statistical curiosity represents an actual “mortality plateau,” which would mean there’s virtually no limit to how long any one of us might be able to hang around, biology be damned.
“Death rates, which increase exponentially up to about age 80, do decelerate thereafter and reach or closely approach a plateau after age 105,” scientists reported in a 2018 paper that re-ignited the long-running debate over the possibility of immortality.
“If there is a mortality plateau, then there is no limit to human longevity,” Jean-Marie Robine, a demographer at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, said at the time.
But the latest research on the topic suggests we all have a practical shelf life, a maximum possible lifespan that’s not much beyond the most extreme expiration date documented so far, achieved by Jeanne Calment of France, who died in 1997 at age 122.
