For the majority of the twentieth century, the notion of ninety years was quietly regarded as the extreme limit for human life expectancy. While some individuals managed to achieve this milestone — a fortunate few centenarians appeared in each generation throughout the twentieth century, with their numbers steadily increasing alongside medical advancements — this was about individual longevity rather than collective survival. The average person born in a particular year within a nation typically did not reach ninety. The highest-performing developed countries yielded female life expectancies in the mid to upper eighties, with Japan at the forefront for decades, just shy of 87 years. Most demographers speculated that any further improvements would be minimal. An average life expectancy of ninety was broadly seen as an unrealistic goal.
However, in February 2017, a report released in The Lancet by a global team led by Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London made a prediction that garnered significant international media attention.
The report asserted that if existing trends persisted, a particular national demographic would achieve a 90-year average life expectancy by 2030. This demographic would be the women of South Korea, marking them as the first group in recorded human history to attain this.
Source of the projection
The Lancet report was far from casual in nature.
Ezzati’s team, in collaboration with the World Health Organization, employed not just a singular statistical model. Instead, they constructed an ensemble of 21 diverse forecasting models — a method adapted from meteorological forecasting, where multiple models are run concurrently, and their outcomes are aggregated based on historical performance. This Bayesian ensemble method is considerably more reliable than any individual model, as it incorporates the uncertainties associated with demographic predictions rather than feigning certainty unsupported by the underlying data.
This approach was applied to 35 industrialized nations, projecting life expectancy at birth up to 2030 along with relevant probability distributions.
For South Korean women born in 2030, the central projection indicated an average life expectancy of 90.8 years. The prediction included a specific likelihood: there was a 57% chance that female life expectancy in South Korea would surpass 90 years by 2030, and a 90% chance it would exceed 86.7 years — matching or surpassing what had been the highest female life expectancy globally in 2012.
The central estimate stood at ninety-point-eight years. Achieving over ninety years was deemed more probable than not. These figures are straightforward.
The projections positioned South Korea at 90.8 years, in front of France (~88.6), Japan (~88.4), and Spain (also ~88). The disparity between Korea and the others is genuine; it is not merely a rounding artifact. Something distinctive about South Korea in Ezzati’s team’s models propelled their projections beyond those of any other nation.
What South Korea has excelled in
The Lancet report and the accompanying EurekAlert announcement were notably clear about the reasons behind South Korea’s superior performance in the projections.
Multiple factors were identified. First, near-universal access to healthcare through the National Health Insurance Service, which has essentially covered the entire South Korean populace since the late 1980s. While this is typical for developed nations, the depth of coverage in South Korea is exceptional and consistently applied across all socioeconomic strata.
Second, exceptionally effective management of cardiovascular risk factors. South Koreans maintain some of the most successfully controlled hypertension rates globally. This is crucial as cardiovascular diseases are the primary cause of death in most industrialized nations, and improvements in blood pressure management directly extend life expectancy in older age groups.
Third, low national obesity levels. The average BMIs in South Korea are significantly lower than those in comparable industrialized nations, especially the United States. The correlation between obesity and mortality is well recognized, with slight national variations in average BMI resulting in significant differences in life expectancy predictions.
Fourth, ongoing investment in childhood nutrition and education through generations. The individuals who will reach old age in 2030 were children during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, a period when South Korea was experiencing remarkable economic progress and channeling much of that growth into public infrastructure. Those who will be elderly in 2050 are currently being born into a system that continues to heavily invest in their long-term well-being.
The fifth factor — the one Ezzati underscored in subsequent interviews — is perhaps the most subtly significant. “South Korea has managed to do many things right,” he mentioned to the BBC. “It appears to be a more equitable society, where the benefits — such as education and nutrition — have reached most individuals.”
In essence, it focuses on equity. The advancements were broadly shared. This is the primary distinction that sets South Korea’s projections apart from those of the United States, where the same report anticipated considerably less progress — and explicitly pointed to inequality and lack of