Kiwis living longer than ever

A baby is born in New Zealand every eight minutes and 45 seconds on average.

Parents around the country welcomed about 170 New Year babies on Monday. On Tuesday, roughly another 170 new New Zealanders arrived.

One remarkable thing about these babies is that, according to Unicef, their life expectancy will take them into the 22nd Century.

Not all of them will make it, sadly, but there is every reasonable expectation that people born in New Zealand from this date forward will still be around to welcome in the New Year of 2100.

Some of them will live much longer than that. The British medical journal The Lancet reported as long ago as 2009 that more than half the newborns in developed countries were expected to live for 100 years.

People alive today will certainly be living in 2120 and beyond.

New Zealand is one of only 21 countries where life expectancy at birth is higher than the 82 years required to make the 2100 benchmark.

Newborn Japanese and Swiss babies can expect to live to 2102. Australians also have a year’s advantage on us.

By contrast, babies born in Sierra Leone today will probably die before 2069.

Life expectancies have been rising for decades. Humanity is getting better at battling infectious diseases, and treating heart disease and some cancers.

According to research led by Professor Kaare Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark, people were living 30 years longer at the end of the 20th Century than they were at its beginning – if they were lucky enough to be born in a developed country.

The expectation of living longer is not just for the newborns. Even elderly people have more years to look forward to.

In the Western world of 1950, only 15 to 16 per cent of women and 12 per cent of men aged 80 could expect to live until their 90th birthdays. A half-century later, 37 per cent of octogenarian women and 25 per cent of men were expected to live another 10 years.

More than half of Japanese women survive the 10 years from 80 to 90.

So, if we are getting so good at staying alive, what exactly is killing us?

In New Zealand, the leading causes of death include ischaemic heart disease, lung cancer, cerebrovascular disease (or strokes).

If you are Ma¯ ori, add diabetes and (for women) chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Non-Ma¯ ori women are more likely than their Ma¯ ori sisters to die from breast cancer.

There are two stand-out inclusions on the list of the top five causes of death for men that don’t appear in the same list for women. They are suicide and motor vehicle crashes.

This is a sobering thought, given that the 2017 road toll has spiked to 380, its worst since 2009.

Even more sobering is that the suicide rate is worse, last year rising above 600 people annually.

So, we may be living longer, but some people are still dying long before they need to – partly because we are still stupid on the roads, and mental health doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

One of the tragedies is that not only are they dying too soon, they are missing out on the extra years of life that increased longevity can give them.