In recent years prominent pundits including Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson and Bill Gates have invoked the progress in global life expectancies to defend capitalism against a growing tide of critics.

Certainly there’s a lot to celebrate on this front. After all, average human life expectancy has improved a great deal. “Intellectuals are apt to do a spit take when they read a defense of capitalism,” Pinker writes in his recent book, Enlightenment Now. But it’s “obvious,” he claims, that “GDP per capita correlates with longevity, health, and nutrition.”

The Guardian