ABSTRACT
Benjamin Franklin once famously remarked that there were two certainties in life, death and taxes. When Franklin made this observation, in the eighteenth century, most people died young. We should not be surprised, then, that he did not include living to a ripe old age in his list of life’s certainties. Living to a great age is not a certainty today. For growing numbers of people, though, it is a distinct possibility. Children born in the year 2000 in France, Germany, the UK and the USA can, on average, expect to live for more than 77 years. Their Japanese counterparts have an average life expectancy of over 80 years. In Britain, the number of congratulatory messages the Queen sends each year to new centenarians has quadrupled since she was crowned in 1953. What is more, life expectancy is projected to go on rising in the coming decades.
