Stopped reading here: A child born in 1900—little more than a century ago—was likely, on average, to die by the age of thirty. This is so misleading, suggesti

Stopped reading here: A child born in 1900—little more than a century ago—was likely, on average, to die by the age of thirty. This is so misleading, suggesting that people typically died before they were 30. The misleading average here is caused by infant mortality. That's the #1 way that life expectancy has risen in the last 116 years. To illustrate how big we've reduced infant mortality, look at this: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm From 1915 through 1997, the infant mortality rate declined greater than 90% to 7.2 per 1000