150 years ago...

I've got my hands on the life expectancy statistics from the Office For National Statistics going back to 1841.

Back in those far off days, 1.51% of the population (1 in 66-ish) could expect to live beyond 100 and the majority of them were expected to last to 104.

In 2002, 2% (1 in 50) will made the century with a gradual drop off to a break through 109.

That is a slow progress over 150 years. So where does the panic come from? Well there were two dips. One in the late1800's and another in the mid 1900's. If you actually take the last fifty years as your basis for a graph, then the differences are actually fairly dramatic. Although still nearly one in 50 of us could expect to reach 100 in both 1960-62 and 1970-72, there isn't anyone recorded as reaching 101.

If anyone is being cheated here, it looks like the British population were actually cheated out of our expected life spans. This is the picture for 90+ going back to the 1840s. The government are definitely cooking the books here.