Digging through the Human Mortality Database, a collection of longevity records from around the world and founded by German and American researchers in 2000, he was surprised to discover that the phenomenon really does transcend time and place. The database now covers thirty-eight countries and areas. But his favorite example is Sweden, which has kept some of the most thorough and reliable demographic data anywhere. In 1800 life expectancy at birth in Sweden stood at thirty-three years for women and thirty-one for men. In 2015 it was about eighty-three years for women and about seventy-nine
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