Life Expectancy

Life Expectancy. One of modern America's greatest achievements has been the reduction of death rates and the prolongation of human life. One way to summarize this development is by the concept of life expectancy, which expresses the average number of years of life remaining to a person at some age, often at birth. This measure is derived from life tables and can be calculated from data at a point in time for persons of different ages (period life expectancy) or by following the same groups of people over time as they age (cohort life expectancy). The data used usually come from federal census counts by age and sex as well as vital statistics of deaths, also by age and sex. Other data, such as genealogies and family reconstitutions, are useable, however, and other methods may be employed.

Life expectancy in the United States has evolved through several stages. During the early Colonial Era, life expectancy was relatively short, death rates were high and variable, and epidemics of infectious disease were common. Life expectancy at birth generally ranged from twenty to thirty years. By the late seventeenth century mortality conditions had begun to improve, and by the late eighteenth century, were quite favorable by world standards. In his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), the Englishman Thomas R. Malthus commented that mortality conditions had for some time been quite benign in America. Mortality was lowest in New England (with life expectancy at birth ranging from 35 to 60 years), more severe in the Middle Colonies (30–45), and highest in the South (25–35). Gradually epidemic diseases such as measles and smallpox became endemic and joined malaria, dysentery, pneumonia, bronchitis, and tuberculosis as major causes of endemic, baseline mortality. Infectious and parasitic diseases accounted for most deaths until the twentieth century, when degenerative conditions (e.g., cancer and heart disease) became dominant.

Life expectancy likely reached a high point in the late eighteenth century and then declined until the later nineteenth century. For example, genealogical data yield an expectation of life at age ten of almost fifty‐seven years for white males in 1790–1794, but by 1855–1859 the figure had declined to forty‐eight years. Data on human stature, another indicator of physical well‐being, support these results. Heights of Civil War military recruits, West Point cadets, college students, and others (mostly males) declined from those born in the 1830s to those born in the 1870s, consistent with a deteriorating disease environment. Information on specific cities with adequate vital statistics (New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New Orleans) reveals constant or rising mortality prior to the Civil War with substantial mortality peaks resulting from cholera (which first appeared in the United States in 1832), typhoid fever, and yellow fever.

During the nineteenth century, the sources of data improved. The census, a federal mandate, was taken decennially from 1790. Questions about mortality in the year prior to the census were asked from 1850 through 1900. But vital‐statistics collection, left to state and local governments, was uneven. Massachusetts in 1842 became the first state to commence comprehensive registration of births, deaths, and marriages. Quality was good by about 1855. Several states followed suit, but the Death Registration Area formed in 1900 by the U.S. Bureau of the Census initially included only ten states and the District of Columbia. Not until 1933 did it cover the entire United States.

From the middle of the nineteenth century on, sufficient information exists to support reasonable national estimates of life expectancy. Table 1 reports life expectancy and infant mortality rates (deaths in the first year of life per one thousand live births) for the white and African American populations from 1850 to 1990. It is apparent that the sustained mortality transition did not begin until about 1880. Life expectancy at birth for whites overall changed little between 1850 and 1880—but then rose from about forty years in 1880 to fifty‐two years in 1900, sixty‐nine years in 1950, and seventy‐six years in 1990. The black population suffered a substantial mortality disadvantage, although protected somewhat by their concentration in rural areas earlier in the twentieth century. (About 80 percent of African Americans lived in rural areas in 1900 in contrast to 58 percent of whites.) Life expectancy at birth for blacks was about 20 percent lower than for whites in 1900, and their infant mortality rate about 54 percent higher. The situation had been even worse around 1850, when African Americans (mostly slaves) had an estimated life expectancy at birth of 23 years (40 percent lower than for whites) and an estimated infant mortality rate of about 340 (61 percent higher than for whites). While infant mortality rates for both groups had declined sharply by 1990, the black rate still remained more than double that of whites.

Table 1. Mortality in the United States, 1850–1990

Expectation of Lifea
At Birth	At Age 10	At Age 20	Infant Mortality Rate
Approx. Date	White	Blackb	White	Blackb	White	Blackb	White	Blackb
(a) The numbers listed in the columns refer to the statistically probable average years of life remaining to whites and blacks at birth, at age ten, and at age twenty. (b) For 1950 and 1960, black and other population.
Source: For sources, see Haines, 2000.
1850	38.4	23.0	47.3		39.5		216.8	340.0
1860	43.6		49.4		41.3		181.3
1870	45.2		50.6		42.5		175.5
1880	40.5		48.3		40.4		214.8
1890	46.8		50.4		42.2		150.7
1900	51.8	41.8	52.5	47.2	44.1	39.5	110.8	170.3
1910	52.7	43.1	53.0	47.9	44.5	40.1	106.1	161.9
1920	57.4	47.0	54.6	45.3	46.0	37.8	82.1	131.7
1930	60.8	48.5	56.3	44.8	47.2	36.6	60.1	99.9
1940	64.9	53.9	58.8	49.5	49.5	40.7	43.2	73.8
1950	69.0	60.7	61.5	54.5	51.9	45.2	26.8	44.5
1960	70.7	63.9	62.8	57.4	53.2	47.9	22.9	43.2
1970	71.6	65.2	63.3	56.8	53.7	47.3	17.8	30.9
1980	74.5	68.1	65.6	60.4	56.0	50.8	11.0	21.4
1990	76.1	69.1	66.9	60.7	57.2	51.1	7.6	18.0

In terms of other mortality differentials, women have tended to live longer than men. In 1850, girls at birth had a life expectancy 6 percent higher than boys, a gap that narrowed to only about 2 percent by 1900. By 1990 women were living almost 10 percent longer than men (seven years). Rural‐urban differences have also been significant. In the nineteenth century, cities were distinctly less healthful places to live. Around 1830, life expectancy at birth was 51 years in 44 New England towns, 42 percent higher than the average for Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia (35.9 years). By 1900, the probability of a child surviving to age five was 22 percent worse in urban than rural areas. This urban penalty had disappeared by 1920, when improved public‐health programs and other reforms in urban America diminished the problems of overcrowding, impure water, food contamination, and poor rubbish removal and sewage disposal. Among the foreign born, life expectancy has usually been lower than that of native‐born whites, partly because of initially lower socioeconomic status and partly from their concentration in urban areas. Regional variations in mortality were substantial since at least 1900, the first point for which they can be observed for the nation as a whole. The lowest mortality areas were in the Middle West; the highest, in the South and New England. These differences diminished over the twentieth century, however, with the spread of public‐health programs and better medical care.
See also Death and Dying; Demography; Immigration; Medicine; Slavery; Urbanization.

Bibliography

Stephen J. Kunitz , Mortality Change in America, 1620–1920, Human Biology 56, no. 3 (1984): 559–82.
Samuel H. Preston and and Michael R. Haines , Fatal Years: Child Mortality in Late Nineteenth‐Century America, 1991.
Clayne L. Pope , Adult Mortality in America before 1900: A View from Family Histories, in Strategic Factors in Nineteenth Century American Economic History: A Volume to Honor Robert W. Fogel, eds. Claudia Goldin and Hugh Rockoff, 1992, pp. 267–96.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Social Security Administration , Life Tables for the United States Social Security Area, 1900–2080, Actuarial Study No. 107, 1992.
Richard A. Easterlin , The Nature and Causes of the Mortality Revolution, in Growth Triumphant: The Twenty‐first Century in Historical Perspective, 1996, pp. 69–82.
Michael R. Haines , The American Population, 1790–1920, in The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, vol. 2, eds. Stanley Engerman and Robert Gallman, 2000.

Michael Haines