Papal demographics

Probably the most geriatric-friendly job in the world, next to congressional Democratic party leader, is pope of the Catholic church — you normally have to be in your 60s be considered, and having reached 70 is generally even better for your resume.

I was therefore very surprised to discover this morning that only 11 of the 266 official popes have reached the age of 85. What’s surprising about this is that while historically a fairly small percentage of human beings reached that age, a vastly larger percentage of upper class individuals already in the 60s and 70s could be expected do so, since the best guarantor of old age has always been having already reached old age, especially if you were at or near the top of the social pyramid

To put this in perspective, today the average 65-year-old American man has a 45% chance of reaching the age of 85 — and this percentage would rise considerably if we were only considering upper class men. Obviously this number would have been quite a bit lower in previous centuries, but 11 of 266 is 4.1%.

Even more surprisingly, perhaps, is that if we limit our time frame to the last 730 years — i.e., since the end of the 13th century, only two out of 73 popes have exceeded the age of the present pontiff, Francis, who turned 86 earlier this month. (This number grows to three if you include Benedict).

I would suggest that these numbers seem to indicate that very demanding high stress jobs are not beneficial to the long term health of those who hold them, and that this generalization has some relevance to subjects other than papal epidemiology.