At age 70, Sandy Larson took to the America’s Got Talent stage and declared that as a child she had wanted to do “something really spectacular on a big stage.” With two similarly aged friends serving as backup dancers, she performed a simple routine with a couple of ornate swords set to the music of Last Chance for Love by Donna Summer.
The audience erupted into cheers in support of the trio.
Simon Cowell, creator of the massively popular television show, described Larson’s friends as “not the best dancers in the world. However,” he continued, “that’s what made it brilliant.”
“I’m the same age as you, so I get it,” added Canadian comedian Howie Mandel, also a judge on the show. “I stand with everybody my age, standing up, having fun and having a good time.”
As Larson’s story shows, with increased age expectancy comes the potential for increased opportunity. Her appearance on the show’s 2025 season premiere, is a case in point. Her performance checks off many of the characteristics of what experts say are the ingredients of a good life in retirement: social interaction, movement and a raison d’être.
The septuagenarian’s performance reflects an attitude of better aging that is so encouraged by aging experts, particularly as life expectancy resumes its upward trajectory. From 2020 to 2022, life expectancy in Canada fell, largely attributed to COVID-19, with drug overdoses also considered an important factor. The latest figures from 2023 show they’re moving back up again.
“This is good because life expectancy was decreasing in Canada, we had never seen that before,” observes Patrice Dion, an analyst with Statistics Canada. "Now it seems that life expectancy is increasing yet again, but we haven't reached the pre-COVID level yet."
Life expectancy increases even further for those in their senior years. Men aged 65 lived an additional 19.6 years on average, while women could expect an additional 22.2 years. Comparable gains were observed across other countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
On the demographic rise
The 85-plus population is one of the most rapidly growing populations in Canada, jumping 12 per cent from 2016 with projections tripling. And yet, even with the slow uptick in life expectancy, Canadians rate at the bottom of the G20 countries for healthy longevity, with a gap between life expectancy and healthy living of about seven years, indicating that Canadians are living longer, but are not necessarily better.
For Parminder Raina, scientific director of the McMaster Institute for Research on Aging, principal investigator for the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging and Canada Research Chair in Geroscience, living well is important, too.
The increase in life expectancy by about 20 years from age 60 a century ago is largely driven by changes in public health initiatives such as nutrition, sanitation and health with a reduction in the infant mortality rate. Penicillin, for instance, helped to prevent deaths in early years related to infections. Along the way, innovations and health-care initiatives have helped boost longevity.
The combination of people living longer, along with people having fewer children, has resulted in a demographic shift, he points out. There are now more Canadians over the age of 65 than under the age of 15. Focusing on that growing group of people reaching age 85 and beyond shows a gap between lifespan and healthspan.
Good policy is key
Canada is the only country in the G7 that does not have a national strategy on aging. Without a concerted effort to recognize the aforementioned demographic shift, Canada will simply be playing catch-up, even as the earliest Baby Boomers start to enter their later years.
“We’re now seeing our Baby Boomer generation increasingly enter those later years of life, where challenges with financial security, managing chronic illness and other issues of aging such as risk of dementia come to the fore and really challenge people to age well,” says Samir Sinha, a geriatrician at Sinai Health and the University Health Network in Toronto.
Another issue is ageism, which also contributes negatively to healthy living for older adults. Raina suggests older adults pay attention to changes in the body. He points to navigating stairs — are we now holding onto the railing when we once just bounced off each step? Without a car or driver’s licence comes the possibility of interacting less with others. Loneliness in some instances can negatively impact health in a way similar to smoking cigarettes, he says.
“The body sees it as a stress. It results in inflammation,” he says.
Are we plateauing?
The question now, Raina says, is whether we’re close to the point of plateauing in terms of life expectancy, whether it will continue to increase or if it will start to decline due to trends such as increased incidence of obesity and related diabetes.
BY THE NUMBERS
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the COVID-19 pandemic reversed the trend of steady gain in life expectancy, wiping out nearly a decade of progress. Between 2019 and 2021, global life expectancy dropped by 1.8 years to 71.4 years, reverting back to the level of 2012. Similarly, global healthy life expectancy dropped by 1.5 years to 61.9 years in 2021.
After three years of decline marked by the COVID-19 pandemic, life expectancy has shown a modest increase in Canada. The most recent data, from 2023, shows an increase from 81.3 to 81.7 years. The upward movement shows a distinct change from a downward trend that had been set into motion in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, but we still remained below pre-pandemic levels.
COVID-19 struck vulnerable seniors particularly hard during those three years. And although that decreased by 60 per cent from 2022, there were still 7,955 COVID-related deaths in 2023. Cancer, meanwhile, represented a little more than one in four deaths, or 25.9 per cent, claiming 84,629 lives in 2023. In the 65 years and older age group, cancer, heart disease and cerebrovascular diseases made up the top three causes.
The number of accidental drug poisoning deaths climbed to 7,162 in 2023, the highest recorded and exceeding the high levels observed during the pandemic.
MCMASTER LOOKING TO CONNECT
McMaster University’s Parminder Raina, who holds the Raymond and Margaret Labarge Chair in Optimal Aging, is keen to exchange information with retirees. The McMaster Optimal Aging Portal is a scientific tool designed for the general public. Raina describes the tool as the only one of its kind allowing for the sharing of preventive approaches to encouraging healthy aging. McMaster’s Voice project also encourages engagement with older people to gauge issues, which could lead to research in the community.