By Burnett Munthali
Human Lifespan
The remarkable increase in the average length of life during the past 2,000 years—from 20 to 25 years to more than 75 years under favourable conditions—has increased the likelihood that a person may live to the maximum limit of his or her span of life.
The potential length of a human lifespan 2000 years ago was the same as now. Approximately 70 to 85 years old, plus 10 to 20 years for the real ‘outliers. ‘ This is the length that it has been throughout all of recorded human history and it was the same for thousands of years before that.
Although average human life expectancy is rising, the maximum lifespan is not increasing. Leading demographers claim that human lifespan is fixed at a natural limit around 122 years. However, there is no fixed limit in animals.
How long can a human live? This means our typical human life span may be static: around 70 years, with an extra decade or so for advanced medical care and cautious behavior. Some geneticists believe a hard limit of of around 115 years is essentially programmed into our genome by evolution.
Work
About one-third or 30 percent of human life is spent working. Most people take a few holidays every year. On average, most people spend about 25 to 30 years working. Work is an important component of adult life, and some people believe that happiness is proportional to the number of hours spent at work.
The average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime. How long is average career? Other than certain jobs, Police, Military and other often dangerous jobs, pro sports are much less but the basic career is usually between 40 to 50 years. It depends on when you start a career job and what the regulations on retirement are for a company. It means most can retire at 65 but that is changing.
Retirement
The retirement age in Malawi is between 50 years and 70 years. The Pension Act does not set a fixed retirement age, instead it provides that a retirement age will be stipulated in the rules of each pension fund, but must be between the age of 50 years and 70 years.
Retirement age in USA 2023 was 67 years old. The current full retirement age is 67 years old for people attaining age 62 in 2024. (The age for Medicare eligibility remains at 65.)
Presently, India’s retirement age of 58-60 years is the lowest retirement age across the globe. In October 2020, the Kerala Government passed an order to increase the state retirement age to 60 years. It was made applicable to all government sectors in the state.
The UK pension age of 66 is set to rise to 67 between May 2026 and March 2028. From 2044, it is expected to rise to 68. But the research suggests that this is not enough, and that anyone born after April 1970 may have to work until they are 71 before claiming their pension.
Early retirement
Advantages of retiring early include health benefits, opportunities to travel, or starting a new career or business venture. Disadvantages of retiring early include the strain on savings, due to increased expenses and smaller Social Security benefits, and a depressing effect on mental health.
Conclusion
In my opinion, I feel that everyone must work for as long as possible depending on the ability and energy in the people that are willing to work. People work to survive, to support their families, to gain status, for social interactions, to learn skills, or to gain a sense of purpose and meaning in their life. These are the most common reasons reported by people on why they work, according to a 2022 Gallup poll survey.
Another purpose of working is that work is inseparable from the purpose of life. A life well-lived is one that pursues meaning, and work is one of the primary ways we pursue meaning in life. Work is about meaning, and the pursuit of meaning.
