June 19, 2012: 5:00 AM ET
By Jennifer Abbasi, contributor
FORTUNE -- The key to living longer after retirement may simply be getting to retirement in the first place. Our average age at death soars in the last third of life. In other words: The longer you live, the longer you're likely to live. "As you work your way through the age range, you're essentially weeding out the frail from the population," explains Bob Anderson, chief of mortality statistics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "When you get to the older ages, you're left with the more robust in the population. And that continues as you move up."
The first deadly hurdles occur in year one, when around 30,000 babies succumb to the likes of congenital defects and prematurity. In the teens and twenties, accidents and violence peak. For men, these are especially risky years -- ages 20 to 24 are known as the "accident hump" (and may be a reason women live longer).
Longevity in a large, aging population has a price, of course -- more elderly retirees must be supported by fewer young workers.
This story is from the July 12, 2012 issue of Fortune.
See the article here:
The longevity sweepstakes
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