ENERGY AND LONGEVITY

This has been firmly established by a study(1) on which we reported at the time [Dec. 78], but it should not be misinterpreted to mean that more energy use "causes" people to live longer (you cannot prolong your life by, say, driving more miles per year). The correlation is high because both longevity and energy use are indicators of the general development of a society. Some of the links are indeed causal, for example, more energy is needed to increase the fraction of protein in the diet, or to provide transportation and other implementations of modern medical care; but other links, such as education, are less direct.

Conversely, energy correlates favorably not only with longevity, but also with other vital statistics (death rate, infant mortality) and with other quantifiable measures of the quality of life, such as medical facilities and doctors per head of population, literacy, enrolment in schools, book sales, recreational facilities per head, etc.

Figures recently released by the US Census Bureau show the US life expectancy records broken again, as they are every year. The life expectancy, or average remaining lifespan, depends on sex and race (since 1965, for example, US black females have had a higher life expectancy at birth than white males) and, of course, on age. Averages are always misleading to some extent, but particularly so when life expectancy is averaged over all living persons in a population, since they are born at different times. A better picture is given by the historical curves valid for a certain age, such as the recently published curves for age 65 in the US, shown on the next page.

The higher life expectancy of women is found in all adult age groups and countries; and judging from the word widower, where contrary to the usual customs of language the male form is derived from the female, the phenomenon is quite a bit older than the Bureau of the Census. [In accordance with the now widely accepted principle that nature is not something to be observed and considered, but something to be legislated away, a US judge in October decreed distinctions between men and women in actuarial tables discriminatory, and prohibited their application to annuity contributions; in November the IRS followed suit by banning these sexist tables for planning estates. It remains for HEW to abolish, by law, the sexist outrage of pregnancy for women only; however, as you will see below, at least the town council of Mine Hill, N.J., has boldly repealed the natural laws of radioactivity.]

Longevity, as a quality of life indicator, is not linked to energy alone. The longevity changes shown on the map of Europe below(2) suggest that they may even be finked to capitalism and freedom. Since 1965, life expectancy has increased in all of West Europe, and decreased in all Communist countries except Yugoslavia. Note that the map shows the recent changes in life expectancy, which tell the immediate story. (The average life span is also shorter in all Communist countries than it is in the West, but that might be explained away by after-effects of events that occurred long ago.)

Returning to longevity in the US, a recent report by the US Bureau of the Census(3) reveals some striking consequences of increased longevity coupled with the falling US birth rate. The population will, of course, continue to increase, since its size is determined by the difference between birth and death rates. However, it will be an increasingly aging society. For the last two decades, the 65 and over group has been growing twice as fast as the rest of the population; the ratio of this group to those under 65 will be 1 to 5 in 1990. What this means for energy is not easy to forecast; but it is not the type of population that is likely to entrust pubic office to a McGovern or Jackson.