September 7, 2026 • 13 mins
How we understand, talk about, and think about life expectancy is sometimes misunderstood by some flukes of math. Understanding how numbers work can illuminate a clearer picture of history and mortality. Long story short, (or short story shorter, this is a mini afterall), there have been old people who lived to be old (very old) for most or all of human history.
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Support us on Patreon!
Links:
- https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy
- https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/life-expectancy#google_vignette
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4861644/
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/why-we-do-what-we-do--3419521/support.
Support our podcast: www.patreon.com/wwdwwdpodcast
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
to Why We Do What We Do Mini. I am
your host, Abraham. And I'm your host, Shane. We are
a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans
(00:25):
and non-human animals do, and we do short versions of
that on Mondays, and we call them minis because they're short.
Mini Mondays. Yeah. And if you're joining us for the
first time, then welcome. I hope that you enjoy what
you hear in this discussion. And if you're a returning person,
then welcome back. Thank you for checking us out once again.
Either way, if you have not supported us yet, you
(00:45):
can do that by leaving us a rating and a review. Like, subscribe.
tell a friend, or you can join us on Patreon.
I'll talk more about those things at the end of
this discussion. But we are here to talk about when
you die. Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So we have heard these jokes about a 20-year-old being
considered basically middle-aged in the 1800s because their life expectancy
was only 40 years old. So if you have made
it to 50, you were decrepit, barely hanging in there,
very ancient, very.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Dusty, if you will.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
However, this is actually a good example of how the
way we measure something can be extremely misleading or can
be misinterpreted quite easily.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yes. So essentially, we're talking about this idea of life expectancy.
At what age are you expected that you might die?
And the average life expectancy in the 1800s was like
42 years old or even less in some places. I'll
get to that in a moment. But what was actually happening? Well,
we'll get into what was actually happening here in a moment.
(01:45):
that number is actually not super representative of what was
actually happening. But you might have thought that like you
made it to 40, you're like, wow, that person is
so old. And if you're in the 1800s and you
knew a 40 year old, like, wow, that person, they're
like on death's doorstep. That's not actually what happened. Now,
to be fair, Because we're criticizing this idea of life expectancy,
(02:06):
and a lot actually has changed that has dramatically increased
our lifespans. And we're going to talk about several of
those things. But there are also some misunderstandings worth clearing
up about life expectancy. So we're going to talk about
life expectancy, how it has changed over time, and why. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So in 1800s and even into 1900, the average newborn
girl was not expected to live to see her 43rd birthday.
The average for boys was around 32. And so it's
important to note the words average and newborn. Lots of
things happen to newborns across their life. And also average,
not a great thing.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yes, very much so. And this is because about 15%
of infants died before their first birthday in 1840. And
as much as 40% of children would not live to
be five years old in some cases, like almost half
would not make it to five years old. So if
you were to just write down the ages at which
all people died in the 1800s, you'd get an average
(03:07):
of mid 30s or 40s as the age at which
people died. You have a whole bunch of these numbers,
and the average number was like 30s and 40s. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But the majority of deaths actually happened on the extremes
of those numbers. A lot of people died very, very young,
and the rest died well into their golden years. Not
that many actually died as a regular matter, of course,
in their 30s and 40s. That was kind of like
just a misinterpretation of those data. So even surviving the
first year of life into the 1800s increased the average
life expectancy by at least five years.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah. Just living to be one years old, one year
old actually increased your life expectancy, like a pretty decent amount. Right.
But like, if you were to look at the numbers,
you'd have the number of people, like if you were
to put an age, like age on a line from like,
let's say just one to a hundred. Most of the
deaths were happening around that one to five. And then
most of the deaths were happening around 70-ish. And there
(04:05):
were not as many deaths happening in the middle. But
the average is the middle. But it really did not
represent what was happening in the middle. At all. Right.
Like really, really misleading. As a matter of fact, if
you survived childhood before there was modern medicine, you are
likely to live until your late 60s and early 70s,
which is not terribly far off from where they are
(04:26):
today with an average life expectancy of 79 years old
in the United States as of 2025. So again, if
you made it through childhood in the 1800s, you might
make it to 70, 71. And that was fairly common.
In the United States now, you might make it to 79.
If you live in Hong Kong, you're doing even better
with an average life expectancy of about 85 years old
(04:48):
as where those are clustering now.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Right, right. There were quite a few things that drastically
changed our life expectancy over the time periods that we're
talking about here. Decreasing infant mortality was the largest thing
by far. We started doing better with sanitation, with treating diseases,
using science-based medicine, and I'm going to emphasize that, science-based medicine. Okay.
(05:10):
Practicing better hygiene, improving safety standards and requirements, and providing
safer and more reliable access to food and clean drinking water.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And not providing ads.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
No, ads were the least helpful.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, we're back. We've been talking about the fact that
a lot of things changed that helped increase life expectancy,
but decreasing infant mortality was like the biggest thing that
moved these numbers up quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
So when we started seeing the fastest and most dramatic
increases in surviving childhood and living a long and healthy
life correlates very powerfully and directly with a particular invention.
If you look at the timeline and you see life expectancy,
it's like slowly sloping upward for a long time. And
(06:04):
then around the early 1900s, all of a sudden it
starts ramping up quickly at a very high rate. Our
life expectancy is jumping very, very quickly. What happened then?
Vaccines happened then. When vaccines started being mandated and used widespread,
lifespans just rocketed upward and child deaths plummeted from that
(06:27):
terrifying 40% to less than 1% in modern days, largely
and if not almost entirely due to things like vaccines
and in particular medicine or in general medicine.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
In general medicine, yeah. Now, that being said, the number
of people living into their 80s, 90s, and 100s has
also increased dramatically. Whereas less than 1% of people have
ever been expected to make it to 100 years old,
current projections expect as many as 8% of people will
live to be at least 100 years old by the
end of this century. I mean, that's a hell of
an increase.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That's a very, very large increase. Eight times more, in fact. Yeah.
So that's a pretty big jump. And again, this is
largely thanks to advances in science, medicine, and importantly, regulatory
boards of experts who have guided policies. And their guidance
has significantly improved the length and quality of our lives
(07:23):
because those policies do things like regulate chemicals that we're consuming,
the kinds of nutrients that we're exposed to, what companies
are allowed to put in their food and drink, and
so There's a whole story worth getting into at some
point about a group of people called the Poison Squad,
whom before we had a lot of these regulations, these
were volunteers who had consumed various amounts of things to
(07:44):
see what happened if you had a whole bunch of
asbestos in your cereal. Yeah. And things like that. And
like they did really dangerous stuff and they suffered for it.
And like they used to try and color milk. I
think they use chalk to try and color milk. So
it looked whiter if it was starting to spoil. And
they're like, yeah, it'll be fine. And as long as
(08:07):
people keep having kids, then we can feed them whatever
and they'll die and their kids will grow up and
then they'll feed it to their kids and we'll just
keep making money. Everybody's happy. Well, not a bunch of
people are dead. We're happy because we have money. And
a lot of policymakers were like, okay. Let's stop doing
that and make it so that things are safe to consume.
But it took a while. It took a while to
(08:29):
get there. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Now, at the risk of sounding alarmist, this is the
risk posed by the current administration, which has virtually obliterated
science-based policies... and experts who have worked so hard for
so long to provide us the gift of long life. Instead,
our lives are now in the hands of for-profit entities
and private equity firms with an agenda to make as
much money as quickly as possible. The goal of making
(08:55):
money does not coincide with taking care of people.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah. And actually, ironically, I think ironically, the wellness industry
is a huge problem here. Yes. They're the ones who
push for no regulation. They're the ones who push for un-evidence-based,
non-proven things. They're the ones who push dangerous, dangerous crap.
And they have found an ally in the staggering incompetence
(09:18):
of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is as corrupt as
the day is long. and is obviously having his pockets
lined by these useless piles of crap. The Trump administration
broadly and every stupid, derelict, belligerent, useless, dumb motherfuckers who
put them the power and continue to support their asinine
stupidities are the reason we're now facing something that should
(09:41):
have been taken care of and was taken care of
a long time ago. So in the extremely unlikely event
that RFK Jr. or anyone, and the Trump administration ever
hears this, I wanna make sure that my message to
you is very, very clear and as professional as I
can make it given the circumstances. You resign now. It's
(10:05):
just dangerous incompetence. The amount of things that we're seeing
backslide is insane. I mean, it's absolutely insane. It's ridiculous.
And unnecessary. Yes. It's every day is mind boggling how
bad things have gotten and how quickly and how worse
they could possibly become.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Please vote these useless ass out, please. Or please overthrow them.
Either way works for me now. We need something to change.
Our lives are in danger at their stupidity. And I
mean stupidity. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Peace be with you all.
(10:44):
Violence is not the answer. A nice bloodless coup is
what we're looking for here. Yeah. If you would like
to tell us your thoughts on this or anything else,
you can email us directly at info at WWD, WWD podcast.com
or reach us on the social media platforms. And I
do look forward to hearing from you, believe it or not.
If you'd like to support us, you can like or subscribe,
leave a rating, just click the highest rating you can.
(11:05):
You can say some nice words in the form of
a review, or you can join us on Patreon. There
you get ad-free episodes, early episodes, bonus content, and I'll
read your name in the list of supporters at the
end of our full-length discussions. So go join us over there,
and that really helps us out, and we do really
appreciate it. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for
recording with me today, Shane. Hey, thanks for having me.
(11:27):
Thank you so much to my team of people. Is
there anything that I missed or that you would like
to add before we wrap this one up? Because we
did say a lot and we ended kind of abruptly.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
No, I think that covers it. Data are interesting. Pay
attention to how data are interpreted. Vaccines save lives.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
All true things. Yeah. The life expectancy thing, I think
has been misunderstood because of the way that the numbers
were crunched. It was hard to live past childhood. If
you did, you live to be fairly old. Now you
live to be much older and a lot more people
do make it there, which is great. Like we have,
we have so many new medicines and things that have
greatly advanced and increased our survival for things that would
have otherwise killed us until we put people in charge
(12:03):
whose mission is to otherwise kill us.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
And so assuming we can over, we can clear that gigantic,
horrible hurdle of incompetence, We'll continue to push the envelope
and see humans survive and thrive and hopefully never make
these mistakes again. Exactly. All right. Well, that was like
a whole nother level of take home points, but I
think we're good there. So thank you for listening. This
is Abraham. This is Shane. Why we do what we do.
(12:27):
Minnie is out. Bye. You've been listening to Why We
Do What We Do.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to www.wwdpodcast.com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you
have an awesome day.
You're listening to Why We Do What We Do. Welcome
to Why We Do What We Do Mini. I am
your host, Abraham. And I'm your host, Shane. We are
a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans
(00:25):
and non-human animals do, and we do short versions of
that on Mondays, and we call them minis because they're short.
Mini Mondays. Yeah. And if you're joining us for the
first time, then welcome. I hope that you enjoy what
you hear in this discussion. And if you're a returning person,
then welcome back. Thank you for checking us out once again.
Either way, if you have not supported us yet, you
(00:45):
can do that by leaving us a rating and a review. Like, subscribe.
tell a friend, or you can join us on Patreon.
I'll talk more about those things at the end of
this discussion. But we are here to talk about when
you die. Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So we have heard these jokes about a 20-year-old being
considered basically middle-aged in the 1800s because their life expectancy
was only 40 years old. So if you have made
it to 50, you were decrepit, barely hanging in there,
very ancient, very.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Dusty, if you will.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
However, this is actually a good example of how the
way we measure something can be extremely misleading or can
be misinterpreted quite easily.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yes. So essentially, we're talking about this idea of life expectancy.
At what age are you expected that you might die?
And the average life expectancy in the 1800s was like
42 years old or even less in some places. I'll
get to that in a moment. But what was actually happening? Well,
we'll get into what was actually happening here in a moment.
(01:45):
that number is actually not super representative of what was
actually happening. But you might have thought that like you
made it to 40, you're like, wow, that person is
so old. And if you're in the 1800s and you
knew a 40 year old, like, wow, that person, they're
like on death's doorstep. That's not actually what happened. Now,
to be fair, Because we're criticizing this idea of life expectancy,
(02:06):
and a lot actually has changed that has dramatically increased
our lifespans. And we're going to talk about several of
those things. But there are also some misunderstandings worth clearing
up about life expectancy. So we're going to talk about
life expectancy, how it has changed over time, and why. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
So in 1800s and even into 1900, the average newborn
girl was not expected to live to see her 43rd birthday.
The average for boys was around 32. And so it's
important to note the words average and newborn. Lots of
things happen to newborns across their life. And also average,
not a great thing.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yes, very much so. And this is because about 15%
of infants died before their first birthday in 1840. And
as much as 40% of children would not live to
be five years old in some cases, like almost half
would not make it to five years old. So if
you were to just write down the ages at which
all people died in the 1800s, you'd get an average
(03:07):
of mid 30s or 40s as the age at which
people died. You have a whole bunch of these numbers,
and the average number was like 30s and 40s. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
But the majority of deaths actually happened on the extremes
of those numbers. A lot of people died very, very young,
and the rest died well into their golden years. Not
that many actually died as a regular matter, of course,
in their 30s and 40s. That was kind of like
just a misinterpretation of those data. So even surviving the
first year of life into the 1800s increased the average
life expectancy by at least five years.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Yeah. Just living to be one years old, one year
old actually increased your life expectancy, like a pretty decent amount. Right.
But like, if you were to look at the numbers,
you'd have the number of people, like if you were
to put an age, like age on a line from like,
let's say just one to a hundred. Most of the
deaths were happening around that one to five. And then
most of the deaths were happening around 70-ish. And there
(04:05):
were not as many deaths happening in the middle. But
the average is the middle. But it really did not
represent what was happening in the middle. At all. Right.
Like really, really misleading. As a matter of fact, if
you survived childhood before there was modern medicine, you are
likely to live until your late 60s and early 70s,
which is not terribly far off from where they are
(04:26):
today with an average life expectancy of 79 years old
in the United States as of 2025. So again, if
you made it through childhood in the 1800s, you might
make it to 70, 71. And that was fairly common.
In the United States now, you might make it to 79.
If you live in Hong Kong, you're doing even better
with an average life expectancy of about 85 years old
(04:48):
as where those are clustering now.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Right, right. There were quite a few things that drastically
changed our life expectancy over the time periods that we're
talking about here. Decreasing infant mortality was the largest thing
by far. We started doing better with sanitation, with treating diseases,
using science-based medicine, and I'm going to emphasize that, science-based medicine. Okay.
(05:10):
Practicing better hygiene, improving safety standards and requirements, and providing
safer and more reliable access to food and clean drinking water.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And not providing ads.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
No, ads were the least helpful.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay, we're back. We've been talking about the fact that
a lot of things changed that helped increase life expectancy,
but decreasing infant mortality was like the biggest thing that
moved these numbers up quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
So when we started seeing the fastest and most dramatic
increases in surviving childhood and living a long and healthy
life correlates very powerfully and directly with a particular invention.
If you look at the timeline and you see life expectancy,
it's like slowly sloping upward for a long time. And
(06:04):
then around the early 1900s, all of a sudden it
starts ramping up quickly at a very high rate. Our
life expectancy is jumping very, very quickly. What happened then?
Vaccines happened then. When vaccines started being mandated and used widespread,
lifespans just rocketed upward and child deaths plummeted from that
(06:27):
terrifying 40% to less than 1% in modern days, largely
and if not almost entirely due to things like vaccines
and in particular medicine or in general medicine.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
In general medicine, yeah. Now, that being said, the number
of people living into their 80s, 90s, and 100s has
also increased dramatically. Whereas less than 1% of people have
ever been expected to make it to 100 years old,
current projections expect as many as 8% of people will
live to be at least 100 years old by the
end of this century. I mean, that's a hell of
an increase.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That's a very, very large increase. Eight times more, in fact. Yeah.
So that's a pretty big jump. And again, this is
largely thanks to advances in science, medicine, and importantly, regulatory
boards of experts who have guided policies. And their guidance
has significantly improved the length and quality of our lives
(07:23):
because those policies do things like regulate chemicals that we're consuming,
the kinds of nutrients that we're exposed to, what companies
are allowed to put in their food and drink, and
so There's a whole story worth getting into at some
point about a group of people called the Poison Squad,
whom before we had a lot of these regulations, these
were volunteers who had consumed various amounts of things to
(07:44):
see what happened if you had a whole bunch of
asbestos in your cereal. Yeah. And things like that. And
like they did really dangerous stuff and they suffered for it.
And like they used to try and color milk. I
think they use chalk to try and color milk. So
it looked whiter if it was starting to spoil. And
they're like, yeah, it'll be fine. And as long as
(08:07):
people keep having kids, then we can feed them whatever
and they'll die and their kids will grow up and
then they'll feed it to their kids and we'll just
keep making money. Everybody's happy. Well, not a bunch of
people are dead. We're happy because we have money. And
a lot of policymakers were like, okay. Let's stop doing
that and make it so that things are safe to consume.
But it took a while. It took a while to
(08:29):
get there. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Now, at the risk of sounding alarmist, this is the
risk posed by the current administration, which has virtually obliterated
science-based policies... and experts who have worked so hard for
so long to provide us the gift of long life. Instead,
our lives are now in the hands of for-profit entities
and private equity firms with an agenda to make as
much money as quickly as possible. The goal of making
(08:55):
money does not coincide with taking care of people.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Yeah. And actually, ironically, I think ironically, the wellness industry
is a huge problem here. Yes. They're the ones who
push for no regulation. They're the ones who push for un-evidence-based,
non-proven things. They're the ones who push dangerous, dangerous crap.
And they have found an ally in the staggering incompetence
(09:18):
of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is as corrupt as
the day is long. and is obviously having his pockets
lined by these useless piles of crap. The Trump administration
broadly and every stupid, derelict, belligerent, useless, dumb motherfuckers who
put them the power and continue to support their asinine
stupidities are the reason we're now facing something that should
(09:41):
have been taken care of and was taken care of
a long time ago. So in the extremely unlikely event
that RFK Jr. or anyone, and the Trump administration ever
hears this, I wanna make sure that my message to
you is very, very clear and as professional as I
can make it given the circumstances. You resign now. It's
(10:05):
just dangerous incompetence. The amount of things that we're seeing
backslide is insane. I mean, it's absolutely insane. It's ridiculous.
And unnecessary. Yes. It's every day is mind boggling how
bad things have gotten and how quickly and how worse
they could possibly become.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Please vote these useless ass out, please. Or please overthrow them.
Either way works for me now. We need something to change.
Our lives are in danger at their stupidity. And I
mean stupidity. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Peace be with you all.
(10:44):
Violence is not the answer. A nice bloodless coup is
what we're looking for here. Yeah. If you would like
to tell us your thoughts on this or anything else,
you can email us directly at info at WWD, WWD podcast.com
or reach us on the social media platforms. And I
do look forward to hearing from you, believe it or not.
If you'd like to support us, you can like or subscribe,
leave a rating, just click the highest rating you can.
(11:05):
You can say some nice words in the form of
a review, or you can join us on Patreon. There
you get ad-free episodes, early episodes, bonus content, and I'll
read your name in the list of supporters at the
end of our full-length discussions. So go join us over there,
and that really helps us out, and we do really
appreciate it. Thank you all for listening. Thank you for
recording with me today, Shane. Hey, thanks for having me.
(11:27):
Thank you so much to my team of people. Is
there anything that I missed or that you would like
to add before we wrap this one up? Because we
did say a lot and we ended kind of abruptly.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
No, I think that covers it. Data are interesting. Pay
attention to how data are interpreted. Vaccines save lives.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
All true things. Yeah. The life expectancy thing, I think
has been misunderstood because of the way that the numbers
were crunched. It was hard to live past childhood. If
you did, you live to be fairly old. Now you
live to be much older and a lot more people
do make it there, which is great. Like we have,
we have so many new medicines and things that have
greatly advanced and increased our survival for things that would
have otherwise killed us until we put people in charge
(12:03):
whose mission is to otherwise kill us.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Right.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
And so assuming we can over, we can clear that gigantic,
horrible hurdle of incompetence, We'll continue to push the envelope
and see humans survive and thrive and hopefully never make
these mistakes again. Exactly. All right. Well, that was like
a whole nother level of take home points, but I
think we're good there. So thank you for listening. This
is Abraham. This is Shane. Why we do what we do.
(12:27):
Minnie is out. Bye. You've been listening to Why We
Do What We Do.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to www.wwdpodcast.com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you
have an awesome day.
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