Longevity effect on populations

[Guest guest]

Hi All,

From http://www.longevitymeme.org/ comes the below on the effects of longer

lives on

world demographics.

http://www.longevitymeme.org/articles/printarticle.cfm?article_id=25

pointing the way to a longer, healthier life -- visit us online at

http://www.longevitymeme.org/

From More Than Human

by Ramez Naam (mez at morethanhuman.org)

Synopsis

Ramez Naam examines the future of population in the light of advancing healthy

life

extension technologies, a discussion reprinted with permission from his book

More

Than Human.

How will longer lives affect world population? Certainly anything that keeps

people

alive longer will increase the number alive at any given point. However, the

details

of population growth can be rather counterintuitive. Consider that today the

countries with the longest life expectancies at birth have populations that are

remaining steady or even shrinking. For example, the UN Population Division

expects

the populations of Japan, Italy, Germany, and Spain to all decrease over the

next 50

years, despite the fact that Japan has the highest life expectancy of any large

country, and the Western European nations are not far behind. At the other

extreme,

the countries with the fastest growing populations are those with relatively low

life expectancies - countries like India, China, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

....

Excerpted from More Than Human © 2005 Ramez Naam. Published by Broadway Books, a

division of Random House. For information about other Broadway books and

authors,

see our web site at http://www.broadwaybooks.com.

Al Pater, PhD; email: old542000@...

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