Americans Are Living Longer. Are Those Extra Years Healthy Ones?
Healthy Living U.S. Census Bureau, Public Information Office (PIO) A new study uses better death data to try to answer a long-standing debate. In 1960, Americans could expect to live, on average, to just before 70. In 1900-just about the time period of Downton Abbey-the life expectancy was somewhere in the mid-40s. Today, the average American life expectancy is about 78. Although some groups have seen their average life expectancies decline slightly in recent years, in general, Americans now live much longer than their grandparents and great-grandparents did. "People are living longer. What nobody really knew was if they were living healthier," David Cutler, an economist at Harvard University, told Popular Science. "That's really just as important as, 'Are we living longer?' What's the quality of those years?" Cutler and two colleagues recently did some research that suggests Americans really have added healthy years to their lives. The economists found that on average,...