No one who lived longer

This is third part of my sequel on how better we are. In the first part, we discussed about peace and the second was about prosperity. This one is more about health and longevity of our generation.

Any casual discussion on our general health and diseases would most likely reach in a curious ‘consensus’. That is, our great grandfathers had enjoyed a better health, they were less prone to diseases, they lived much longer than us, they ate good food, did physically demanding jobs that strengthened their body etc. In contrast, we believe that we are not healthy enough, and would die at an early age.

Since this belief is widespread, including amongst doctors, let me try to explain the facts in detail.

Firstly, did they live longer? Yes, perhaps. But, only few of them. The average life expectancy of our country when we got independence was just 33 years. Ie, on average, a man was expected to live only till that age. Few fortunate children, who happened to survive till 5 years, could live up to their 60 th or 70 th birthday if they were lucky enough. But many perished even before turning 5.

Now let us speak with data. As per World Bank data set, in 1960, only 30% of a cohort of new born children would survive up to the age of 65. Meanwhile, that figure slowly increased and in the year 2000, it was 58.8% and in 2017 it is 68.2. It implies, your grandfather, in 1960, if he happen to alive above the age of 65, it was because he was in the luckier 35%. In other words, 70% of his schoolmate would have already died before they celebrate their 65 th birthday.

Now let us see what World Bank data set says in matters related to child births in 1960. It says, in the year 1963, 232 children out of 1000 born, would not have reached their 5 th birthday. However, this figure reduced gradually to reach 91 in the year 2000 and now it is at 36. It implies, a baby born in the year 2017 is less likely to die than his uncle who born in 1963 by a magnitude of 8 times. Similar is the figure for his mother as well.

Were they free from ‘life style diseases’ like diabetic, cholesterol etc? Most of us tempt to believe that these diseases are new and hence our grandfathers were free from these malaises as they lead a non-sedentary life style. However the truth need not be that way around.  We, most of us, are not sure of how our great grandfather died. We only know that it was a natural death. But these ‘natural deaths’ may be because of a massive heart attack, because of a leaky heart valve or fat accumulation in his arteries. Since there was no regular medical check up in those days, most likely this would have gone undetected and he happened to drop down to death in one fine morning.

Because he died due ‘natural death’, and he was taking no medication for ‘life style diseases’ we safely assumed everything was perfect at that time.

Now, let us what data says. As per World Bank, from the year 2000, to 2017, there was a drop from 26% to 23 % , of the people between age 30 and 70 who would have died because of Cardio vascular diseases, diabetic, cancer which grouped as ‘Life style diseases’. Unfortunately, we don’t have data of pre 2000 years. But seeing from the trend and interpolating it, we can safely assume that in the year 1960, percentage of the people died due to this kind of diseases would not have been lesser if not higher.

Hence, it can be safely argued that our grandfathers could have equally died of ‘Life style diseases’ if not more, than the present day generation. It sounds quite logical because, these diseases were less likely to be detected on time and far less likely to be treated with right kind of medication. Hence we can safely assume that, contrary to popular belief, they were equally vulnerable, if not more, to any kind of lifestyle disease than we are.

We take absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Hence we carry false set of  believes.

In terms of communicable diseases, the figures are really shocking. People died in droves due to plague, leprosy, smallpox, typhoid, yellow fever, to name a few. People were more prone to snakebites, dog bites, drowning, and many similar causes.

Let us also look in to some other interesting data.

a)       Rate of immunization for DPT, Measles etc which was just in single digit till 1980s. Now it almost reached 90%.

b)      Take prevalence of stunting, wasting, or under fed children. Over last few decades, it had substantially reduced. It implies, our children are far better fed and cared than our grandfather when he was a kid. Similar is the data regarding anaemia, pregnant women getting pre natal care, post natal care etc.

c)      In India of 1960 s. only a 0.3% of the total population was men of 80 years or above. Now, 0.8% of total population is 80 plus. It implies, we have more share of 80 + population today. Similar is the data for people above 65 years of age. Still many believe that people in the past era lived longer.

The reason why we held this false believes were that, in India, till a few decades back, there were no proper recordings available for the number of deaths and the possible cause of death. We were right when in the case of first order logic, ie my grandfather was alive at the age of 85.   But the problem in this argument was many such ‘would be grandfathers’ would have already perished much before and we choose to ignore that cohort. 

This is called Survivor-ship bias. We overestimate about those which are visible to our eyes while underestimates what we don’t see. This lead to a completely wrong conclusion about the health conditions about our past generation.

Someone can argue that even if they lived shorter, they had a healthy living. However, it happens because we ourselves choose to live longer. Given a choice, we prefer to remain alive by medication rather than dying. Perhaps our grand parents too wanted to live longer, but they had no choice other than to die pre-maturely.

Modern medicine, scientific discoveries, related technologies helped us to lengthen our lives and thereby enabling us to spend more quality time with our children, grandchildren, and even with our great grandchildren. It made our life more wonderful and richer than the past. Still it is unfortunate that many amongst us believe in the myth that, everything was better in the past and we are a spoiled generation. It is all about our inability to think critically. We think conjectures as truth and confuse correlation with causality. With some anecdotal evidence, some coincidence here and there, we build a theory upon it that, in the past, people lived longer.

Hence the truth is simpler. World which we live, is far better than world which our grand parents lived.