The Slowing Pace of Progress
Perhaps, you say, we can at least credit modern medicine for dramatically expanding our life expectancy, even if more and more of our extra years are wasted in traffic jams or holding patterns. But on close examination, even the so-called revolution in healthcare technology turns out to have had little effect in prolonging life spans over the last half century.
To be sure, if either Ozzie or Harriet suffered from, say, cancer, they'd benefit from undergoing today's chemotherapy treatments, which, while still not effective in many cases, do allow most cancer patients to live longer than they would have in the 1950s. Similarly, one stands a better chance of surviving a heart attack and many other acute illnesses than one did then. But if the couple studied up on the question, they'd most likely be astonished and disappointed by how little they could improve their life expectancy by fast-forwarding into our world.
Most of the gains in life expectancy during the 20th century came before 1950 and resulted far less from medical advances such as penicillin than from improved nutrition, housing, sanitation, and the increase in average living standards. These improvements led to dramatic declines in infant mortality, which is the overwhelming reason that average life expectancy at birth has increased--not any significant lengthening of life span among those lucky enough to survive childhood diseases. Indeed, the specific role high-tech medicine has played in improving public health is so subtle as to be hardly measurable.
In Costa Rica, total healthcare expenditures per person come to just $226 a year, as compared with $4,187 in the United States, according to the World Health Organization. And there are only half as many doctors per capita as in the United States. Yet for women, life expectancy at birth is only slightly lower in Costa Rica than in the United States, and for men it's actually higher. Why?
Probably because most Costa Ricans have access to basic, preventive healthcare, and more important, have enough money to feed and house themselves and their children adequately, even if they don't quite yet enjoy the standard of living Ozzie and Harriet did in the 1950s. Yes, many Costa Ricans who get sick in old age don't have access to high-tech procedures that might extend their lives a few more months or years. But this has little effect on average life expectancy. That's because the elderly in any society are a comparatively small share of the population and have many fewer potential years of life remaining than do children or the middle-aged.
How might Ozzie and Harriet interpret this reality? They could rightly infer that, given their existing middle-class status, time-traveling to the start of the 21st century would do little to improve their life expectancy. Since 1950, life expectancy at age 45 has increased by just 5.7 years, and much of that is due not to high-tech medicine per se but to the dramatic fall in the poverty rate since then, especially among the elderly. Indeed, such time travel would probably shorten the couple's remaining years if it entailed their becoming too poor to afford the warm house, adequate nutrition, and clean surroundings they enjoyed in 1952. Yes, traveling to our time might give them the benefit of hearing more about the dangers of smoking, excess drinking, lack of exercise, or fatty diet. But writers as ancient as Aristotle have taught the virtues of moderation.
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