The Gift of Life Years

We measure life in quality and quantity. Quality can be a challenge because it is different for everyone. Measuring quantity is much easier. Count up how many people and how long they are expected to live.

According to the website OurWorldinData, in 1800 there were one billion people on the planet. Today there are over 7.8 billion. 

Our World in Data also reports that life expectancy in 1800 was around 28.5 years.  Imagine if life expectancy was still just 28.5 years today. Fortunately for all of us, life expectancy has increased by 44.7 years, to 73.2 years, with men at 70.8 years, and women at 75.6 years. 

Total life years is the product of population, multiplied by life expectancy. In the last 220 years, life expectancy increased by 157 percent, and population increased by 680 percent. This leads to an increase of life years of 1,903 percent. 

We can look at this growth with a different kind of chart. In this chart, population in billions is on the horizontal axis, and life expectancy in years is on the vertical axis. In 1800 there were one billion people with an average life expectancy of 28.5 years. The red box represents the total life years in 1800 of 28.5 billion.

We will use a green box to represent total life years for 2020.

By 2020 life expectancy had increased to 73.2 years or by 157 percent. Population increased to 7.8 billion or by 680 percent. Total life years in 2020 was around 571 billion years. Total life years increased from 28.5 billion in 1800 to 571 billion in 2020. This would be a 1,903 percent increase. 

More people with the freedom to learn and innovate and share their creations in markets are making life safer, healthier, and longer. People today get 16,315 more days to enjoy living, versus those in 1800. Since 1800 every one percent increase in population corresponded to 24 days of additional life expectancy. Total life years increased 2.8 percent for every one percent increase in population. Life years have grown by a factor of 20 since 1800. Total life years have been increasing at around 1.38 percent a year for the last 220 years. At this rate, life years double every 51 years.

You can watch a video of this story here:

Excerpt from our forthcoming book, Superabundance.

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress