gts wrote:

>
>
>According to the table at the link below, life expectancy in the US was only
>47.3 years in 1900. A hundred years later, in 2000, it was 76.9. That is a
>huge increase in only 100 years. Surely the discovery of penicillin and
>other medical advances are major reasons for the increase in longevity.
>
>http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2002/02hus028.pdf
>
>
Just about the entire change in life expectancy is due to the decrease
in childhood mortality.
Today when it is very rare for a baby or child to die, we lose sight of
the fact that 100 years
ago, probably 1/3 of children died before their 5th birthday.  If people
made it out of their
childhood, and women made it through childbearing years (another big
cause of death), they
were likely to live nearly as long as the average today.

If people really died in their forties a hundred years ago, grandparents
would generally have
died before children could remember them.

    Lynnet

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