# How has lifespan changed after factoring out childhood deaths **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 30, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-lifespan-changed-after-factoring-out-childhood-deaths/545068 "2010-06-30T15:06:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-lifespan-changed-after-factoring-out-childhood-deaths/545068/1 "2010-06-30T15:06:47Z")
Life expectancy has grown dramatically in the last few hundred years, going from about 30 up to 75+ in many areas. However most of that seems due to better nutrition and protection from microbes in youth. I am under the impression that lifespan itself has only grown by 5-10 years or so due to all the medical advances. If you avoid malnutrition and death by microbes in the 18th century, you might live to 70. Now you might live to 80 if you avoid those. But the total lifespan of someone who avoids dying in childhood and youth from microbes and malnutrition hasn’t changed much. So how has lifespan changed in the last few hundred years due to modern medicine? For the most part have people always lived to 70-85 and then died if they avoided dying in their youth and has our lifespan been pretty much static? What about disability rates of 2010 vs 1770? I assume elderly disability rates are far far lower now than they were back then, even if lifespan is roughly the same. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-lifespan-changed-after-factoring-out-childhood-deaths/545068/2 "2010-06-30T15:57:17Z")
Here you go: [ > [@Daily Telegraph](#): > > The scale of the challenge is simply put. When the current retirement age of 65 for men was fixed in 1940, their average life expectancy at birth was 60; for women it was 65. Now, according to the Office for National Statistics, a 65-year-old man can expect to live for another 17 years, a 65-year-old woman for 20. There are marked regional variations, of course, but such rapidly rising life expectancy makes the current arrangements unaffordable. ]([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/7852782/Pensions-were-now-living-longer-we-must-work-longer.html](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/7852782/Pensions-were-now-living-longer-we-must-work-longer.html)) ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-lifespan-changed-after-factoring-out-childhood-deaths/545068/3 "2010-06-30T17:05:43Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Here you go: > > [url=[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/7852782/Pensions-were-now-living-longer-we-must-work-longer.html](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/7852782/Pensions-were-now-living-longer-we-must-work-longer.html)] That includes child mortality, though, so doesn’t answer the OP. We’ve done this before, though (usually with respect to ancient peoples). I can’t look it up at the moment, but the consensus was, if I recall correctly, that life span (i.e the maximum age) hasn’t changed much. Life expectancy (the average age at death) has almost tripled from prehistoric times. A little more an half of that is child and maternal mortality. The rest is what the OP wants: increase due to better medicine, random advancements, and food availability. You can find tables of “life expectancy for 20 year olds,” which is what we really need, although it will still include maternal mortality, which the OP may or may not care about. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2010, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-has-lifespan-changed-after-factoring-out-childhood-deaths/545068/4 "2010-06-30T17:09:05Z")
That doesn’t separate them out though. Life expectancy has grown dramatically, but mostly due to advances in nutrition and protection from microbes (sanitation, vaccines, clean drinking water, hygiene, antibiotics, etc) lowering infant and childhood death rates. I did find this though: > **[Life Expectancy by Age, 1850–2011](https://www.infoplease.com/us/health-statistics/life-expectancy-age-1850-2011)** > > The expectation of life at a specified age is the average number of years that members of a hypothetical group of people of the same age would continue to live if they were subject throughout the remainder of their lives to the same mortality rate. Life expectancy for white males at 20 was 40 more years in 1850, and is now 57 more years. So there have been advances outside of childhood death. That was a reply to Quartz btw.