I read somewhere (I can't find it after googling extensively) that the first couple of generations of Europeans to settle in the US had a pretty long life expec

I read somewhere (I can't find it after googling extensively) that the first couple of generations of Europeans to settle in the US had a pretty long life expectancy mostly because the escaped crowded cities. Sanitation hadn't been figured out yet, but the population was so sparse the drinking water hadn't been contaminated to a considerable degree, etc. Of course as cities were built, the life expectancy went right back down to the 35-40 years it had been previously. You're right of course that living longer gives us the chance to get "old people's" diseases. But the majority of the gains were made from 1900 to the 1940s, the climb is much, much slower after that. http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html