Today's babies 'will live to 100'

The babies of today will be the centenarians of tomorrow if current trends in life expectancy continue to rise as they have over the past 150 years.

Two scientists have predicted that within 60 years people can expect to live to 100 because of improvements in health care, diet, housing and other factors that result in a longer life.

Dr Jim Oeppen of Cambridge University and Professor James Vaupel and the Max Planck Institute in Rostock, Germany, calculate that life expectancy since the mid-19th century has risen by 2.5 years every decade and shows no signs of levelling off.

It is reasonable to assume that this trend will continue for many years to come, they write in the journal Science. "If so, record life expectancy will reach 100 in about six decades," they say.

Many other experts have suggested that life expectancy has an upper limit which humanity is fast approaching. However, every time someone has predicted an end to the continuing rise in life expectancy, they have been proved wrong, according to Dr Oeppen and Professor Vaupel.

"As the expectation of life rose, higher and higher, experts were unable to imagine its rising much further. They envisioned various biological barriers and practical impediments. The notion of a fixed lifespan evolved into a belief in a looming limit to life expectancy," they say.

"Before 1950, most of the gain in life expectancy was due to large reductions in death rates at younger ages. In the second half of the 20th century improvements in survival after the age of 65 propelled the rise in the length of people's lives," they say.

Government advisers on pensions and social benefits have consistently assumed a levelling off of the rise in life expectancy but it has continued to increase at a constant rate.

The increase threatens to add extra burdens on the health, pensions and welfare systems of Britain and other governments. The new research is bound to add weight to arguments calling for an increase in the retirement age.

"This mortality research has exposed the empirical misconceptions and specious theories that underlie the pernicious belief that the expectation of life cannot rise much further," say Dr Oeppen and Professor Vaupel.

"Centenarians may become commonplace within the lifetimes of people alive today."