Definition
The “longevity dividend” represents the health and economic gains expected to accrue to individuals and societies resulting from successful efforts to slow the biological processes of aging.
Overview
When Michelangelo painted “The Creation” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome in the sixteenth century, he portrayed the Renaissance view of mankind as having been molded by the hand of its creator, in his image, as a “perfect” physical specimen. Such “perfection” might lead some to believe that the lifespan potential for humans is revealed in the alleged ages of the biblical patriarchs from the Antediluvian era where Adam was said to have lived for 930 years; Noah, 950 years; and Methuselah, 969 years (Olshansky and Carnes 2001).
The biblical view of why humans fail to live this long now is because of humanity’s fall from grace, but from the view of Charles Darwin, humans could never have lived this long. When Darwin formed the theory of evolution in the late nineteenth...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Ahlburg DA, Vaupel J (1990) Alternative projections of the U.S. population. Demography 27:639–652
Carnes BA, Olshansky SJ, Grahn D (1996) Continuing the search for a law of mortality. Popul Dev Rev 22:231–264
Carnes BA, Olshansky SJ, Grahn D (2003) Biological evidence for limits to the duration of life. Biogerontology 4:31–45
Carnes BA, Holden LR, Olshansky SJ et al (2006) Mortality partitions and their relevance to research on senescence. Biogerontology 7:183–198. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10522-006-9020-3
Case A, Deaton A (2015) Rising morbidity and mortality in midlife among white non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st century. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 112:15078–15083. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1518393112
Christensen K, Doblhammer G, Rau R, Vaupel JW (2009) Ageing populations: the challenges ahead. Lancet 374:1196–1208. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61460-4
Crimmins E (2015) Lifespan and healthspan: past, present and promise. Gerontologist 55:901–911. https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnv130
Darwin CR (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. John Murray, London
de Grey A (2004) Escape velocity: why the prospect of extreme human life extension matters now. PLoS Biol 2:e187. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0020187
Goethe JWV (1856) Faust. A tragedy translated from the German of Goethe with notes by Charles T Brooks. Ticknor and Fields, Boston
Goldman DP, Cutler DM, Rowe JW et al (2013) Substantial health and economic returns from delayed aging may warrant a new focus for medical research. Health Aff 32(10):1698–1705. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0052
Kennedy BK, Pennypacker JK (2014) Drugs that modulate aging: the promising yet difficult path ahead. Transl Res 163:456–465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trsl.2013.11.007
Kirkland JL (2013) Translating advances from the basic biology of aging into clinical application. Exp Gerontol 48:1–5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exger.2012.11.014
McKay CM, Pope F, Lunsford W (1956) Experimental prolongation of the life span. Bull N Y Acad Med 32:91–101
Miller R (2012) Genes against aging. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 67:495–502. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/gls082
Neugarten BL, Havighurst RJ (1977) Extending the human life span: social policy and social ethics. National Science Foundation NSF/RA 770123, Chicago
Olshansky SJ (2018) From lifespan to healthspan. JAMA 320(13):1323–1324. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.12621
Olshansky SJ, Carnes BA (2001) The quest for immortality: science at the frontiers of aging. Norton, New York
Olshansky SJ, Carnes BA (2013) A measured breath of life. Chicago
Olshansky SJ, Carnes BA (2017) Primary prevention with a capital P. Perspect Biol Med 60(4):478–496. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2017.0037
Olshansky SJ, Carnes BA (2019) Inconvenient truths about human longevity. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci. (in press). https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/gl7098
Olshansky SJ, Carnes BA, Cassel C (1990) In search of Methuselah: estimating the upper limits to human longevity. Science 250:634–640
Olshansky SJ, Perry D, Miller RA, Butler RN (2006) In pursuit of the longevity dividend: What should we be doing to prepare for the unprecedented aging of humanity? Scientist 20(3):28–36
Olshansky SJ, Martin G, Kirkland J (eds) (2015) Aging: the longevity dividend. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring/Harbor/New York
Riley JC (2001) Rising life expectancy: a global history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA
Sierra F (2015) The emergence of geroscience as an interdisciplinary approach to the enhancement of health span and life span. In: Olshansky SJ, Martin G, Kirkland J (eds) Aging: the longevity dividend. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring/Harbor/New York, pp 1–14
Sierra F, Kohanski R (2016) Advances in geroscience. Springer, Dordrecht
Vaupel JW (2010) Biodemography of human ageing. Nature 464:536–542. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08984
Wilmoth J (2001) How long can we live? Science 291:1491. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/291/5508/1491/tab-e-letters
Acknowledgments
The author acknowledges is to the Glenn Award from the Glenn Foundation for Medical Research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Olshansky, S.J. (2021). Longevity Dividend. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M.E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22009-9_397
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22009-9_397
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22008-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22009-9
eBook Packages: Social SciencesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences