I can’t count how many times I’ve seen people write about how life expectancy has gone up dramatically because of modern [medicine|sanitation|technology|whatever]. Often they report (as this site does) (edit: here’s another) that the average life expectancy has increased to near-80 from something under 50 (43 in the first example, 62 in the 1930s in the second). For some time I’ve wondered whether this was life expectancy at birth (and therefore affected by infant mortality), which would be quite different than everyone keeling over before their grandchildren are out of diapers. This site gives the answer:
Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2004 — Infoplease.com.
…and it’s clear that infant mortality was the issue in the 1800s, not general early death. Looking at white males (the first table) the life expectancy at birth in 1850 was indeed a dismal 38.3 years. But that’s incredibly misleading.
At age 10 the life expectancy had increased to 58.0 years.
The final number goes up for each subsequent column, but the big jump in life expectancy is from 0 to 10:
- 0 to 10 — 19.7 years
- 10 to 20 — 2.1 years
- 20 to 30 — 3.9 years
- 30 to 40 — 3.9 years
- 40 to 50 — 3.7 years
- 50 to 60 — 4.0 years
- 60 to 70 — 4.6 years
- 70 to 80 — 5.7 years.
The difference in life expectancy for a newborn and a ten year-old doesn’t mean that a newborn could actually expect to live an average of 38.3 years. It means that a newborn faced two distinct possible futures: he had somewhere between a 60 and 66% chance of living 58 years; and he had somewhere between a 34 and 40% chance of not living to see double-digits. The variance is due to the unknown average age of death for under-10s. If they all died as infants, then roughly 34% died that way. If they all died as 9 year-olds (far less likely it would seem) then 40% of them died that way. In any case, it’s fair to say that the majority of the reported prolonging of life is due to reducing childhood mortality
Comparing just life expectancy for 20 year-olds, in 1850 a young man could expect to live to 60.1. In 2004, that same man could expect to live to 76.7. That’s a significant improvement, but considering that in 1850 the germ theory of disease was just being formalized, it seems a little less impressive.
Geoff Canyon's Appeal to Authority 
I’d heard life expectancy was a lot greater in ancient times, and plummeted once the Industrial Revolution came, and only now are we starting to make up ground again.
Nonsense. Life spans increased because of the industrial revolution – they did not go down.
What you’ve heard is a complete fallacy.
Yeah, sure, because working 18 hours/day inside a factory full of smoke, living in 20 people inside a room without access to fresh water and in a city full of smog instead of living in the countryside didn’t impacted the life expectancy…
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/19th-century-scientists.php
Look at the ages of famous 19th century people. Either its a coincidence they double the reported life expectancy, or something doesn’t add up.
Thus is exploded one of the myths used to argue against a monogamous commitment: Margaret Meade used it and Vance Packard and other folks who didn’t know what they were talking about. In the 1970’s I listed it
(in an address before an international gathering } as one the of the fallacious arguments: unlike our short lived ancestors we simply, because of extended life expectancy, be expected to stay married to the same person for life.
The next stupid argument against monogamous marriage was the myth that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. I pointed out in the same address that when you ask the source of that figure the person using the argument does not know, or responds with the statement that last year there were two million marriages and one million divorces. Even those with little statistical smarts would know that the one million divorces did not come from the two million marriages, but from all marriages. The last time I looked the census said the divorce rate was around 7%….It was two years after my speech that Roper of the famed Roper Polls made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle announcing his group’s discovery of that truth. However, the popular myth continues to be printed in magazines and tossed about as truth. Sigh.
Your math is COMPLETELY wrong. In order to get an accurate estimation, you have to summate all divorces over a period (say 2000 to 2015), and divide by the summation of all marriages in the same period (say 2000 to 2015). If we use CDC data for 2000 to 2015 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm), we arrive at 13,950,928 divorces divided by 35,119,152 marriages, which gives a divorce rate for that time period of 39.725%.
Not much of a life, since most of them stuck to their bed and can’t move much. It’s still true, that life is worth living. People appear to live on average to an age of about 40.
It’s astounding how often I read articles in respected newspapers and websites where average life expectancy at birth is misinterpreted as the age past which nobody lives. A recent New York Times article used it as a reason why people in their seventies should not make too many plans for the future because the seventies are an “end.” Never mind that on average a seventy year old will live to be eighty-seven. And a Salon.com article used the it as the reason why government health care programs for the elderly were unnecessary in revolutionary times, because supposedly everyone was dead by fifty.
Yea and 1 in 2 people get cancer now but its not b/c they live longer it’s because they get x-rays. X-rays mutate DNA and cause cancer, we’ve known this for almost a century now but we’re still exposed to it by doctors even with safe alternatives like ultrasound and mri. Makes you wonder about population control and that quote by Prince Philip wishing to be reincarnated as a lethal human virus. A guy by the name of John Gofman who was an M.D. and a Ph.D. studied radiation from x-rays and concluded that 80% of cancer is caused by exposure to x-rays. Oh but that’s all just a giant coincidence. A million isolated incidents is all.
I’m sorry, but half the world has cancer? Just don’t post if youre going to make up your own numbers.
He didn’t say that right now half of all people have cancer. The longer you live the more likely you are to get cancer and the statistics are shocking. Currently, about 1 in 3 people alive today will die from cancer. This has more to do with increased longevity than getting your wrist x-rayed in middle school. As you get older your cells keep replicating. The more times you copy DNA the greater the chances of a mistake. It’s like playing telephone.
jc:
Yes, x-rays can cause cancer, but they are not an evil magic amulet which causes death by its mere presence in any amount. That’s a good thing, because that’s the kind of thing we get a little of from the natural environment. I understand that a dental x-ray is about equal to one days worth of natural radiation exposure, and that a chest x-ray is equal to 10 days or so, depending on where you live. As I recall, living in Denver for a year, compared to other places, is equivalent to quite a few of those dental x-rays. (And yes, I don’t like them all that much.) If you want to talk about CAT scans, or x-ray radiology as practiced many years ago, I think you may have a point. I think the difference between a dental x-ray and a cat scan is probably like the difference between chewing on your nails without washing your hands first and eating ten pounds of dirt. Another way to think about it is that, if x-rays were so bad, all astronauts who’ve spent a few weeks in space should be dying horribly of cancer within a few years. They’re getting a whole lot more than us. Check out the following, which seem to me to be somewhat reliable, and don’t seem to disagree with what I’ve read here and there:
Click to access Doses_from_Medical_X-Ray_Procedures.pdf
Click to access 284273main_Radiation_HS_Mod1.pdf
The first says that we receive something like 3mSv of radiation from natural sources in a year. (Take that as a gross approximation. I could have radon in my basement, you could live in Maccu Piccu (sp?). Then it says a dental x-ray might be 0.004mSv, one like I had on my foot a couple of years ago might be 0.06mSv, and the worst single x-ray they list is still less than a mSv, or 4 months of natural exposure. Not so bad so far. But they give a head CT scan as 2mSv, an abdominal CT scan as 10mSv (3 years!) and a certain kind of heart study up to 57 (19 years!!). I don’t think I’d want many of those! So my own policy is not to worry about single x-rays, though of course I ask some questions.
In the second publication, from NASA, it says on page 8 that 6 months on the International Space Station is 160 mSv. If most of us get half our radiation exposure from x-rays and the like, and half of us ground bound people die of radiation caused cancer, then the astronauts who’ve been on the ISS, especially those with more than one mission, ought to be dropping like flies by now, at least 25 or 30 times our annual dose from each mission!
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Mr. Canyon,
Thanks for making this point. I was about to put my foot in my mouth in the manner you describe, but something about it smelled wrong. Fortunately I found your essay about the subject and was spared the gustatory ignominy. However, I’m not going to go on your authority. I don’t trust facts from anyone who uses the word “dynamic” without irony. Fortunately, you make a pretty good argument. I am still impressed with medicine*, though. Losing some large fraction of kids has got to be tough on a society, and even tougher on the kids. On the other hand, it’s now fairly possible to be in denial about death for a very long time. I’m impressed, even though I’ve noticed they don’t seem to be moving fast enough toward the rejuvenation pill I’ll need within a few short decades, if not sooner. I could use it now.
*medicine. The business and organization of medicine is another story.
JC., Ultrasound is Safe ?
If you really think that than you should lay down in a bath top fill it with water , put your head under water and have somebody take a hammer and knock from the outside onto the bath tub. What you will then experience is what the unborn is exposed to . PLUS that the developing brains of this Baby is effected by this.
Ultrasound is unsafe? What evidence do you have to back this claim?
The frequency of ultrasound is above the range of the human ear, so a child in the womb would not hear the ultrasound, only possible secondary sounds. These sounds were found to register up to 100dB by researchers. I don’t think there is any evidence to support a claim that 100dB at a duration/interval of 1/10,000th sec would even cause any hearing loss, let alone somehow effect the development of a child’s brain.
Even if most of the increase in life expectancy comes from reduced childhood mortality, it still reflects positively on the effect of modern health care and nutrition. If you lived in the past you were far more likely to die in your early life. I really don’t get your criticism
There are many people that have the belief that life was much better in the distant past, I don’t see the evidence that supports supports that this way of thinking.
This is a non issue. Medicine is real, it works, and the point is not that medicine MAKES YOU LIVE LONGER, it just prevents you from dying. Without medicine, children and elders would die from the common cold. Of all the ridiculous misconceptions perpetuated by the media and blog world, I can’t believe you chose this to latch on to.
It is a coincidence that I also wrote of this same myth (http://passionforthepast.blogspot.com/2011/08/average-life-expectancy-myth.html), and I’m glad to see that others are dispelling this in a sensible way.
Modernites have a tendency to believe the lies (“people were much shorter back then, that’s why they had smaller beds and lower ceilings”) rather than accept the truth about the past.
A little research beyond the high school text book and what the college history professor believes one should know will eventually get rid of these false tales.
Excellent.
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I just wish someone could give me a definitive answer to plain ole life expectancy in the 1870s and up to 1930 or so.
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I read a lot about famous or notable people in the past centuries. They have lived in so many instances to the same old age as we have today (2016). I was actually quite astonished to read over and over again of persons having died in their late 80’s even in the 1700’s. I doubt the great majority of propaganda reporting Americans have been given. The kosher cabal controls the media/publishing. Nothing reported in media is to be trusted it seems after John F Kennedy was murdered.
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For an excellent explanation of the definition of “life expectancy” and the distinction of “Life expectancy from birth” and “Life Expectancy from age x” see https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancyhttps://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
There is a particularly striking graphic there that shows that in 2012 there were no countries that had a life expectancy at birth worse than the healthiest country in 1800. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ourworldindata_life-expectancy-cumulative-over-200-years.png
As for ancestors who lived to a ripe old age, like my grandfather, it is important to know that most of their siblings died as infants (like my grandfather’s 6 of 10 siblings). That’s also probably not counting premature stillbirths that were too numerous to count in Oklahoma’s Indian territory.
Yes, things have gotten considerably better in last hundred or 150 years. Just check wikipedia, gapminder.org, or ourworldindata.org, or your old printed encyclopedia or yearbook. You can even check a family bible for birth and death dates of your ancestors, but don’t just look for extremely long lives, look at the statistics of infant mortality.
That’s not to say that progress is inevitable, the US has had rising maternal death rates and a declining longevity for white males in the last 10 years or so (apparently tied to depression like alcohol, suicide, drug type deaths.)
Excellent info, thanks!
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