Increased Life Expectancy: a Blessing or Curve

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Is increased life expectancy a blessing or a curse? Increased life expectancy is a blessing for individual but is it also good for society? From the government’s viewpoint, the answer is an anxious no. Choose a disastrous metaphor. The aging of Americans is a “financial time bomb” as proclaimed by The New York Times. Foreign Policy magazine says that a “grey tsunami can have devastating results for the planet” including United States (Starobin, P, 2011). So, we can infer that the governments consider it as a curse. This is because the phenomenon requires additional funds in terms of Social Security to pay for people living longer. Similarly, funds are needed to cater the medicad and medicare expenses of the same. Subsidized housing, retirement pensions from military and private industry pension, disability payment all fall in the same category and anything that involves an outflow of cash would hammer a longer life as a curse. On the other hand, an individual would never mind living a few years longer. Though, the human bodies are not designed to enjoy life after 70, and the wear and tear reduces the physical and mental activities including but not limited to hearing, eyesight, mobility, and sense of taste we are greedy in nature and want to love longer to spend more time with the family. As David Canning, Professor of economics, population science and international health at Harvard said “From an individual’s point of view it is great but from the society’s perspective it isn’t” It comes back to the simple old question we always had “Is the glass half empty or full”. The best answer I supposedly heard was from the grandmother of comedian, Ricard Pryor “Depends on whose pouring!” References: Starobin, P. (2011). No, Malthus, No: Living Longer Is a Blessing, Not a Curse. National Journal Magazine. Retrieved from

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