S. Jay Olshansky
Professor, School of Public Health · University of Illinois Chicago
Chicago, IL, United States
Impact
S. Jay Olshansky is a demographer whose research concerns the upper limits of human longevity, forecasts of population size, survival and age structure, and the health and policy implications of individual and population ageing. With colleagues in the biological sciences he helped develop the biodemographic paradigm of mortality, which seeks to explain the biological basis of survival and dying-out processes. His 1990 Science paper 'In Search of Methuselah' estimated upper limits to human longevity, and a 2005 New England Journal of Medicine paper he led warned of a potential decline in US life expectancy in the twenty-first century. He is associated with the 'Longevity Dividend' argument that slowing ageing in people would bring broad health and economic returns, and a 2024 Nature Aging paper he led argued that radical life extension in the twenty-first century is implausible. He is a Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois Chicago and a Research Associate at the University of Chicago Center on Aging, co-founded Lapetus Solutions, and has written or co-edited several books on ageing. In 2022 he testified before the US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Metrics
- h-index 52 · google scholar as of 2026-09-23 source ↗
Research output
19 works · 323 citations · h-index 5 OpenAlex ↗
Selected publications
- The aging of the Human Species ↗ 1993 · 159 citations
- Demographic Perspectives on Human Senescence ↗ 1994 · 60 citations
- If Humans Were Built to Last ↗ 2001 · 54 citations
- The Quest for Immortality 2001 · 34 citations
- If Humans were Built to Last ↗ 2003 · 5 citations