Comment on In the olden days, when people got married a lot younger, there were probably lots of grandparents in their thirties

<- View Parent
squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

That’s a bit of a misconception. Life expectancy doesn’t measure the age at which most people die, but the average life expectancy.

That means, a bunch of different values contribute to the life expectancy and they do so to a wildly different degree.

Let’s say that without any adverse effects everyone dies of old age at around age 90.

Someone dieing of pulmonia at age 80 only scratches off 10 years, but someone dieing at age 0 due some childhood illness, bad hygiene, malnutrition or other complications scratches off 90 years.

In fact, by far the strongest contributor to the average life expectancy is child mortality. In 1800 in the USA, child mortality was at 46.2%.

If you discount child mortality, most people actually died aged 65-90.

1000052233

source
Sort:hotnewtop