generational longevity

[nudge67]

 Hi all

after the missus asked me to get funeral cover (her dad died in January) I've been thinking about the life expectancy of my ancestors. Conventional wisdom dictates that advances in health make each generation on average live longer than the preceding one, so I thought I would look at my ancestors to see how they go. Also, those who lived in the colonies are known to have a improved life expectancy to their European counterparts.

To start off, I'm in my late fifties, and my parents are hale and hearty in their eighties. I would expect given their health for them to both make it into their nineties.

Grandparents: all South Australians born in the early 20th century, they all lived into their eighties, with an average age of death being 84 years, 3 months.

Great-grandparents: all South Australians born in the late 19th century, ages of death range from 53 to 91, with an average age of death being 73 years, 4 months. Drop of a decade in a generation. The open verdict by the coroner in one of these deaths by a 61-year-old war veteran skews the figure downwards.

Great-great-grandparents: all but one were South Australians, born in the mid-19th century, ages of death ranging from 49 to 93, with an average age of death being 75 years, 6 months. Average lifespan holds steady.

3x-great-grandparents: This is the generation of my ancestors, largely born in rural areas of the UK (or in one case Hanover) in the early 19th century who mostly migrated to Australia in the mid-19th century, ages of death ranging from 26 to 89, with an average age of 66 years, 6 months. Again, a drop of a decade within a generation. Factors here include two deaths in childbirth skewing the figures down. I have only used the statistics of 28/32 members of this generation; the other four I do not have accurate lifespans for. Average lifespan of those who didn't emigrate was 57 years.

4x-great-grandparents: British/European born in the very late 18th and early 19th centuries, about half of whom migrated to South Australia. Those who migrated generally lived a decade longer than those who didn't. Accurate lifespans only known for 36/64 of this generation. Ages of death range from 43 to 89; average lifespan of 72 years, 2 months.

5x-great-grandparents born late 18th century, I only have accurate data for nineteen of them, but they have an average lifespan of 81 years, 2 months.

So, the average lifespan by each generation has gone 81, 72, 66, 75, 73, 84, 84+. I am surprised by the dip and rise. could that be the effects of the Industrial revolution taking its toll?


(edited with updated info)

[Vance Mead]

I have read about studies of soldiers' average height when entering the army in the 18th and 19th centuries in England and Germany. Height apparently correlates with levels of nutrition and health. I can't remember the details, but soldiers' heights decreased quite a lot from 1700 to mid-19th century. No doubt working on a farm was healthier, with better nutrition, than in a factory.

[Viktoria]

Your last comment is so right, if you are poor and hungry at least you have fresh air in the  countryside, access to berries and rabbits if you don’t get caught poaching .
In the unbelievable squalor of the town slums life was truly horrendous ,it is hard to believe just how bad it was.
If you are so minded read Engels’”The Conditions of the Working Class in England” —- you will hardly believe it.
It is a true horror story , sadly it is all true.

My Dad’s chest measurement was in the low thirties, on the medical notes on his enlistment form.World War 1.

I can remember people with severe malformations,- bandy legs and knock on knees  due to inadequate diet coupled with long working hours and breathing polluted air both in the mills and in the streets from the hundreds of mill chimneys, belching out filthy black smoke .
Stunted people with curved spines,and women with deformed pelvises making childbirth difficult if not impossible.
Such people were a common sight even into the 1940’s to 50’s in many industrial towns and cities . I certainly remember them.

Viktoria.

[Ayashi]

My mother's side is actually quite consistent. My parents are averaging 70 (still alive), mum's parents 69. Their parents 71 and THEIR parents 66 (dragged down a little by one dying aged 30). Mine seemed to either go in their 50s or their 80s.

[Top-of-the-hill]

  I have no doubt that the towns were squalid and disease-ridden, but something in the countryside made people move there. I believe life in rural areas got worse in the early to mid 1800s than it was earlier. My ancestors were almost entirely rural.

[Gillg]

My 19th century paternal ancestors left the Huntingdonshire countryside, where they were working as ag labs or were cordwainers.  The industrialisation of the shoemaking industry meant that their skills were no longer necessary and they all upped sticks and moved to industrial Lancashire, where they found work in the mills and on the railway.

My maternal ancestors were nearly all workers in Lancashire mills.  Most of them died quite young from lung diseases, including my grandmother, who died aged 45.  She had worked in a woollen mill from the age of around 10.  My mother, however, lived to 95!

[Top-of-the-hill]

  So did mine! Mother and her siblings, born between 1912 and 1921, made 87,95,45,93 and 95. The one who died in middle age had a lot of health issues, smoked quite heavily and I suspect may have been autistic.

[Andrew Tarr]

{I just added this to another thread, but it seems to belong here too ! Despite the ravages of WW2 the wartime government wisely regulated the food supply so that health actually improved because of good diet.  Since junk food became the norm that trend has ceased. }

I don't find longevity figures particularly remarkable, since my mother died in 2006 aged 102 (and a half).  Most of the women in my maternal line reached their late 80s or early 90s.  The more unusual fact about my mother is that I saw her census record before she died.  She was born in 1904 in India (father was in the education service) but was living with an aunt in Ireland in 1911.  Ireland released their census records after about 90 years instead of 100.