>I don't think the curves would look very different; wealthy people
>live longer, but that seems to be more because being poor is bad for
>your health. The very rich today have access to nearly the same
>medical techniques most people have access to through various
>healthcare systems, they only get better service. As far as I know,
>there is no trend showing the wealthy moving ahead more and more in
>life expectancy.
But what if overall poor people are becoming wealthier? Then the increases in life expectancy just reflects increasing living standards, not true life extension. What we need to know is how long the average rich person with adequate access to medical technology (and who was non-smoking etc) would have lived in 1900 vs. 2000.
ciao, patrick
Editor: PSYCHE: An International Journal of Research on Consciousness Board Member: The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/ http://assc.caltech.edu/