15. Realized living potential
With the term realized living potential (R.L.P.) we indicate the length of time actually lived compared with the length of the interval in question. We are using the words "living potential" and not "life potential" because the latter have other connotations while here the question is simply of survival
Beginning at age 80 this indicator has been calculated for finite intervals and is shown in relation either to the number reaching age 80 or the number entering the interval in question. The realized living potential is given in Annex Table 11 by age group and sex for each country and period, expressed in years lived per each 80-year-old, and in Annex Table 12 per each person reaching the specified age interval. The former set of data is summarized in Table 32 for countries with acceptable data quality in the 1980-90 decade. If the ages 100 and over were included, the total of the years lived in all age intervals would equal life expectancy at age 80. However, the total for 80-100 comes very close to it.
In the first column of Table 32, R.L.P. is expressed in percent of the 80-100 interval. For men, the highest value is about 36 percent for Iceland while most countries cluster in a narrow range around 30 percent. Eastern Europe around 25 percent. Women approach or reach the 40 percent mark in many countries but barely 30 percent in regimes of high mortality.
Both the levels and trends in survival can be compared internationally in Figure 31 where 21 countries are ranked in order of life expectancy at age 80. For males it shows the leading position of Iceland, rapid progress in Japan, Switzerland and France, almost no improvement in Norway and the Netherlands, sluggish in Sweden and Denmark, uncertain early data in Italy, rapid progress in Finland after 1970 and in West Germany and Austria after 1980. Several other countries show solid improvement, in some cases quite fast, but stagnation is evident in the former East bloc.
For women the progress is much more impressive throughout. The rise is particularly rapid at ages 85-90 and in many cases faster above than below this interval. Even at 95-100 the advance is often easily noticeable even in this scale. In Scandinavia and the Netherlands, where progress was slow for men, it has been rapid for women. Steady improvement can be seen even in Eastern Europe.
Men of 80-85 seem to meet resistance at the 4-year level almost as if it was an asymptote. This, of course, is not the explanation. The great international diversity in the male scene points to reasons specific to each country. In contrast, the development regarding women has been both very regular and widely uniform as has been pointed out earlier. One factor which could have caused mortality differences - smoking - was never prevalent in these female cohorts which reached adult age before right after World War I.
Updated by V. Castanova, 1 November 1999