Now life really could start at 40
LONDON, England -- Life for many could really begin at 40, under a new method of thinking about aging developed by researchers in the United States and Austria.
Instead of looking at how many years a person has lived, the scientists factor in how many years people can still look forward to.
They say the new concept explains how it can be that overall populations are aging, yet people seem younger.
"Using that measure, the average person can get younger in the sense that he or she can have even more years to live as time goes on," Warren Sanderson, of the University of New York, told Reuters.
Sanderson and Sergei Scherbov, of the Vienna Institute of Demography applied their method to study how the effects of aging on people in the U.S., Germany and Japan will change over the coming decades.
In 2000, the average German was 39.9 years old and could expect to live for another 39.2 years, according to the journal Nature.
But by 2050 the average German would be 51.9 years old, yet could still expect to live for another 37.1 years.
That would effectively mean that middle age would not arrive in Germany until a person reached the age of 52, rather than 40 as it was in 2000.
At that time, the average American was 35.3 years old and could hope for another 43.5 years.
By 2050, the average age would rise to 41.7 years while the average amount left to live would stand at 45.8 years.
"As people have more and more years to live they have to save more and plan more and they effectively are behaving as if they were younger," Sanderson said.
"A lot of our skills, our education, our savings and the way we deal with our health care depend a great deal on how many years we have to live.
"This dimension of how many years we have to live has been completely ignored in the discussion of aging so far."
Reuters contributed to this report.
