Let’s see how life expectancy has improved without taking the massive improvements in child mortality into account. The data shown in this chart makes this clear. Mortality rates declined, and consequently life expectancy increased, for all age groups. I think that, even if this were true, it would be one of humanity’s greatest achievements, but in fact, this assertion is also just plain wrong. The evidence that we have for population health before modern times suggest that around a quarter of all infants died in the first year of life and almost half died before they reached the end of puberty (see here) and there was no trend for life expectancy before the modern improvement in health: In the centuries preceding this chart, life expectancy fluctuated between 30 and 40 years with no marked increase ever.Ī common criticism of the statement that life expectancy doubled is that this “only happened because child mortality declined”. While England and Wales are not the only region that achieved this improvement, the last 150 years are the only time that humanity achieved anything like this. 1 This achievement was not limited to England and Wales since the late 19th century life expectancy doubled across all regions of the world. Life expectancy at birth doubled from around 40 years to more than 81 years. The most striking development we see is the dramatic increase in life expectancy since the mid-19th century. The light green line, for example, represents the life expectancy for children who had reached age 10. The rainbow-colored lines show how long a person could expect to live once they had reached that given, older, age. Until the mid-19th century a newborn could expect to live around 40 years. The red line shows the life expectancy for a newborn. The visualization shows the life expectancy in England and Wales over the last three centuries.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |