In Sri Lanka in the late 1940s life expectancy was rising at least a year every twelve months. How much difference did this make? Consider the United States: if people died throughout this century at the same rate as they did at its beginning, America's population would be 140 million, not 270 million.
The United Nations World Health Organization reported in 1997 that average life expectancy is now 64 years in developing countries and 80 years in some industrialized nations, with the overall population of people older than 65 likely to grow by 82 percent in the next 25 years, compared with 46 percent in the working age population, and only 3 percent in newborns.