Despite average life expectancy increasing, the proportion of Australians making it to age 110 has barely shifted since the 1960s, with a new report asking whether there is a limit to how far lifespan can be pushed.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) on Tuesday published its How long can Australians live? report, containing the latest life expectancy and longevity data. Over the past five decades, life expectancy in Australia has increased by 13.7 years for males (to 81.3) and by 11.2 years for females (to 85.4).
The report found more people are living past 100, with people aged 100 or older making up .08% of deaths in 1964, and 1.4% of deaths by 2021.
But most of these centenarian deaths were people who died between the ages of 100 and 104 years.
There were two supercentenarian deaths – meaning people who died after making it to 110 or older – in the decade from 1964, and 31 in the decade beginning 2012, comprising less than .01% of deaths in both time periods.
“Why are people living longer on average, but there has been minimal improvement in the longest living individuals?” the report says.
While it does not answer the question, the report notes: “Some experts argue that the maximal life span is unlimited, associated with ongoing gains in life expectancy from social and medical advances.”
The report says that in Japan, female life expectancy had been rising for 160 years at a steady pace of three months a year, without reaching a plateau. The nation’s population of supercentenarians increased by 564% (from 22 to 146) in the decade to 2019, despite the overall population in Japan falling.
“This raises a fundamental question around whether there is a limit to the human life span,” the report says.
“There is no agreement on the exact limit of the human life span. Only since the 20th century has it become possible to authenticate the true age of very long-lived people, and even then, the availability of records is patchy, and validation requires meticulous investigation.”
A senior research fellow with the Laboratory for Ageing Research at the University of New South Wales, Dr Lindsay Wu, says “the idea of a fixed maximum human lifespan is quite contentious”.
He says while there have been several calculations that seem to suggest a fixed, maximum limit to human longevity, these “lead to all sorts of furious discussion”. He said some theories have been based on studies in animals such as mice, which are difficult to extrapolate to humans.
“While the field of ageing research is working on interventions that could extend overall lifespan, the lower hanging fruit, which in my view is probably even more important, is in improving overall health and quality of life in the elderly,” he says.
He says rather than focusing on just extending life, improving mobility, strength, and cognition as Australians age are critical.
According to the Gerontology Research Group, Dexter Kruger, who died aged 111 in 2021, is considered the longest-lived Australian male, while Christina Cock was the longest-lived Australian female, dying in 2002 at 114.
In the decade to 2021, the most common age at death in Australia was 87 for males and 91 for females.
An AIHW spokesperson, Richard Juckes, says: “We all know that average life expectancy keeps on increasing.”
“But what is interesting is that the maximum age people live to isn’t changing nearly as much,” Juckes says.
“These data are key to enhance our understanding of how long Australians are currently living, whether we can expect Australians to continue to live to increasingly older ages and how these trends have changed over time.”
The report calls for more rigorous validation of deaths at extreme ages, coupled with linked births and deaths data, and more detailed population statistics, to better understand Australian longevity.
