Economic Benefits Of Longer Lives

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Robert Fogel will be speaking in Berkeley later this month on the economic implications of increasing healthy life span and better medicine over the course of the 20th century. A choice quote: "Fogel argued in a recent lecture that assessments of economic gains over the past 130 years should include the 50-percent likelihood that a U.S. student today will reach the age of 100 'in good health.'" This is, of course, a very conservative projection given current research trends. Increased life span brings greater opportunities for wealth and further increases in life span: "The advances in the first half of the 20th century have been greatly underestimated because economists have concentrated on wealth but ignored gains in health and longevity."

Link: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2004/11/04_fogel.shtml