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It's true that infant mortality has decreased faster than other mortality in the past century. Even people who survived past infancy had significantly higher mo

It's true that infant mortality has decreased faster than other mortality in the past century. Even people who survived past infancy had significantly higher mortality rates at the beginning of the 20th century, though. See "Table 6 - Period Life Tables for the Social Security Area by Calendar Year and Sex" for detailed information from the United States: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/pdf_studies/study120.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/oact/NOTES/pdf_studies/study120.pdf In the table series for 1900, male life expectancy at birth was 46.4 years and female life expectancy was 49 years. For the survivors of infant mortality, additional life expectancy at age 6 was 53.2 years and 54.3 years respectively. Most children could not expect to reach their 60th birthday even if they had survived infancy. At age 18, remaining life expectancy was 41.7 and 42.9 years, for total expected age at death of 59.7 and 60.9 years respectively; weighted by sex distribution at age 18, these young adults had an average life expectancy of 60.3 years.

ColanR 7y ago
I don't think that looking at lifespans for the industrial revolution has any bearing on what lifespans used to be 'historically'. It was pretty clear to me, from reading the GP that they were talking about pre-industrial revolution times.
- philipkglass 7y ago
  Remaining life expectancy at age 18 was even lower in 1800 or 1700, from what I can tell. You can find small exceptions (like aristocrats in particular countries) but I'm not aware of any large (50,000 people or more) preindustrial population where the average teenager could expect to die older than age 60. I would be delighted to see counterexamples. EDIT: This was interesting. "Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800". It examines the lifespans of European aristocrats over the thousand years prior to the Industrial Revolution. It limits its analysis to people who reached at least 20 years of age. Per Figure 8, the average lifespan remained below 60 in the entire time period. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-...
  - andai 7y ago
    I wonder what pre-agricultural lifespans were like? I read recently that humans were significantly taller and healthier before agriculture, due to getting nutrition from many sources rather than a few crops. I expect they were much lower than in the cities, despite the nutritional advantage.
    - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
      > pre-agricultural lifespans Probably short. Putting aside predation, disease and starvation, there is evidence (see Pinker) that violent death was a common way to go in nomadic tribes.
      - chrisweekly 7y ago
        Violent death was common, sure, but not necessarily more so in pre-agricultural times. See e.g. the early chapters of "Sapiens" (Yuval Harari). Agricultural revolution led to lower standard of living, increased risk of starvation (feast-or-famine dependence on fragile harvest), increased health issues (less-varied diet, also disease rampant in denser populations), and whereas in the presence of potentially hostile competition nomadic hunter-gatherers could choose to move, farmers would logically choose to stay and fight rather than leave the farm and almost certainly die. The agricultural revolution was a pretty bad deal for most people for most of the time since it began.
        chrisco255 7y ago
        The farmers won. Why would they choose to farm if there were no advantages? What happened was that farming was so successful that the human population boomed. When famine did occur, it caused more deaths because there were more humans.
        legulere 7y ago
        Farming societies are more hierarchical and have more people. For the ones in charge that is for sure advantageous. Also it’s a bit of a trap: as soon as you switch over you cannot go back, as foraging cannot sustain as many people. You will have to constantly expand to feed the growing population.
melling 7y ago
Aren’t we talking about two different things? “Maximum lifespan is believed to be under genetic control” Given modern medicine etc. more people are approaching the maximum lifespan, but we aren’t increasing the maximum. Some people in the middle ages lived well into their 80s, just not nearly as many as today. For example, 600 years ago Michelangelo lived to be 88. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo
- philipkglass 7y ago
  There's one popular misconception that everyone died young in Ye Olde Times of Yore. As you note, Michelangelo and some other historic persons with documented lives refute this misconception. It's also incorrect to attribute shorter historical life expectancy only to infant mortality. That's why I replied to the post by mullingitover. In 1900 Americans had barely even odds of living to age 60 once they had already survived to age 18. Again referencing the Social Security data I originally linked, life expectancy at age 18 increased by 17.3 years (60.3 to 77.6 years), or 29%, over the course of the 20th century. The maximum life spans documented among the very oldest people are also interesting, and show much smaller gains, but are separate from questions of average life expectancy among infants, children, or young adults.

ColanR 7y ago

I don't think that looking at lifespans for the industrial revolution has any bearing on what lifespans used to be 'historically'. It was pretty clear to me, from reading the GP that they were talking about pre-industrial revolution times.

philipkglass 7y ago
Remaining life expectancy at age 18 was even lower in 1800 or 1700, from what I can tell. You can find small exceptions (like aristocrats in particular countries) but I'm not aware of any large (50,000 people or more) preindustrial population where the average teenager could expect to die older than age 60. I would be delighted to see counterexamples. EDIT: This was interesting. "Lifespans of the European Elite, 800–1800". It examines the lifespans of European aristocrats over the thousand years prior to the Industrial Revolution. It limits its analysis to people who reached at least 20 years of age. Per Figure 8, the average lifespan remained below 60 in the entire time period. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/lifespans-of-the-european-elite-8001800/BE252C4B25C4AAC29ED62D591A1675AC/core-reader https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-...
- andai 7y ago
  I wonder what pre-agricultural lifespans were like? I read recently that humans were significantly taller and healthier before agriculture, due to getting nutrition from many sources rather than a few crops. I expect they were much lower than in the cities, despite the nutritional advantage.
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > pre-agricultural lifespans Probably short. Putting aside predation, disease and starvation, there is evidence (see Pinker) that violent death was a common way to go in nomadic tribes.
    - chrisweekly 7y ago
      Violent death was common, sure, but not necessarily more so in pre-agricultural times. See e.g. the early chapters of "Sapiens" (Yuval Harari). Agricultural revolution led to lower standard of living, increased risk of starvation (feast-or-famine dependence on fragile harvest), increased health issues (less-varied diet, also disease rampant in denser populations), and whereas in the presence of potentially hostile competition nomadic hunter-gatherers could choose to move, farmers would logically choose to stay and fight rather than leave the farm and almost certainly die. The agricultural revolution was a pretty bad deal for most people for most of the time since it began.
      - chrisco255 7y ago
        The farmers won. Why would they choose to farm if there were no advantages? What happened was that farming was so successful that the human population boomed. When famine did occur, it caused more deaths because there were more humans.
        legulere 7y ago
        Farming societies are more hierarchical and have more people. For the ones in charge that is for sure advantageous. Also it’s a bit of a trap: as soon as you switch over you cannot go back, as foraging cannot sustain as many people. You will have to constantly expand to feed the growing population.

melling 7y ago

Aren’t we talking about two different things? “Maximum lifespan is believed to be under genetic control” Given modern medicine etc. more people are approaching the maximum lifespan, but we aren’t increasing the maximum. Some people in the middle ages lived well into their 80s, just not nearly as many as today. For example, 600 years ago Michelangelo lived to be 88. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo

philipkglass 7y ago
There's one popular misconception that everyone died young in Ye Olde Times of Yore. As you note, Michelangelo and some other historic persons with documented lives refute this misconception. It's also incorrect to attribute shorter historical life expectancy only to infant mortality. That's why I replied to the post by mullingitover. In 1900 Americans had barely even odds of living to age 60 once they had already survived to age 18. Again referencing the Social Security data I originally linked, life expectancy at age 18 increased by 17.3 years (60.3 to 77.6 years), or 29%, over the course of the 20th century. The maximum life spans documented among the very oldest people are also interesting, and show much smaller gains, but are separate from questions of average life expectancy among infants, children, or young adults.