One of the important factors that I’m concerned about, other than job creation is the average life expectancy of human beings.
Personally, growing up in India I saw people perish at young ages, having limited time to spend with their loved ones. Out of the 13 kids that my maternal grandparents had, only 6 survived and my grand mother passed away just after giving birth to the 13th kid.
Over the last 70 years, the global Average Life Expectancy has grown from 45.73years in 1950 to 72.58years in 2019 – an increase of 59% (26.85years). In the same period, life expectancy in India grew 95% (33.84years) from 35.81years to 69.66years. Most of this could be attributed to peace initiatives across the globe, better health care access, access to food and clean drinking water, and general physical health awareness.
A subset to this increase in Average Life Expectancy is the Average Healthy Life Expectancy, and this is the actual available time on Earth to have a happy, productive and meaningful life. Data from 1990 till 2016 show a 10% (6.24years) increase globally and 16% (8.12) increase in India.
If you look specifically into India, the Life expectancy was 78% of the global average in 1950 and in 2019 it is 96% of the global average. At the current growth rate, India will move past global average soon.
The Average healthy life expectancy though it grew in year terms between 1990 till 2016, as a percentage of the Average life expectancy it saw a decline both Globally (89% – 88%) and in India (88% – 85%).
Average Life Expectancy
| Region | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 | 2016 | 2019 |
| World | 64.18 | 66.28 | 69.93 | 71.93 | 72.58 |
| India | 57.87 | 62.51 | 66.69 | 68.9 | 69.66 |
Average Healthy Life Expectancy
| Region | 1990 | 2000 | 2010 | 2016 |
| World | 56.88 | 58.38 | 61.31 | 63.12 |
| India | 50.77 | 53.54 | 56.92 | 58.89 |
As the amount of time available to live a healthy life on earth increases, people need sufficient activities to fill in this additional years. Some seek entrepreneurship or other activities that keep them engaged, running towards a self set goal. For people who don’t partake in this mad race, they seek spending meaningful time with their families, fill their time by entertainment activities and the latest trend of consuming content – in addition to whatever work that they do to have food on the table.
Having additional years to spend, also is a great opportunity to businesses that are in to filing this otherwise idle time. These are entertainment businesses like movie productions, online contents, gaming, amusement parks, travel, etc and wellness businesses like fitness studios, spa, healthy foods etc.
Increasing Life expectancy also means that people would reproduce less, knowing that they don’t have to make more kids to increase the probability of a surviving offspring. My maternal grandparents, if lived in the current age, wouldn’t have given birth to 13 kids, nor would my grandmother have lost her life early.
The additional years that we have in our hands now, is the collective work of this human race over centuries and let us not take this for granted, and use it meaningfully. I, personally appreciate the additional years and won’t take it for granted.
What would you do with these additional years?
