Western life expectancy increased by 50 years since capitalism emerged

Life expectancy in the West is around 80 years today. Two key questions arise: what was it before capitalist development began (in around 1650-1700) and what factors have contributed to this huge improvement? Addressing the first question can help us to identify the total increase, and addressing the second question can help to quantify the contribution of factors such as vaccines and sanitation. Once these contributions are well understood, we can prioritise our efforts accordingly. 

The first reports under the Births and Deaths Registration Act of 1836 of England became available in 1838, at which point life expectancy in England was around 40 years. But prior to that, the data gets fuzzy.

1. Thomas McKeown’s work is based on registration data

Thomas McKeown’s pathbreaking 1976 book, “The Modern Rise of Population” analysed the mortality trajectory of different diseases since around 1838. He found a significant mortality decline (mainly infant and child mortality) since 1838. Most of this was from infectious diseases. As children began to survive, British population increased, without any increase in birth rate. He attributed most reductions in mortality to improved nutrition and living standards, i.e. the fruits of capitalist development. Clean water and sewerage systems played a secondary role, and medical advances (including vaccines) played a miniscule role.

2. But McKeown’s work is insufficient

There are two shortcomings with McKeown’s work. First, he attributed relative shares to different factors (nutrition, housing, water, sewerage, medical advance) towards mortality reduction, not towards improved life expectancy. But factors which save the lives of children have a disproportionately large impact on life expectancy compared with those which save the lives of the elderly. We want to identify factors that increase life expectancy the most. 

Second, McKeown’s starting point (1838) was rather late. As noted above, by 1838, life expectancy in England was already 40 years – a level achieved in India only in the 1960s. Significant capitalist evolution (such as economic freedom, respect for the businessman, private property rights, the rule of law) had started since the Magna Carta of 1215. By 1700, capitalist development had reached “escape velocity”, with greatly improved international trade, agricultural production, and better road transport and urbanisation. We need to start from that period, not 1838. 

3. Using Bills of Mortality and parish registers

While we don’t have high quality data prior to 1838, Church registers that were maintained since the late 1400s can provide some insights. Initially, parishes kept a record of baptisms. Later, in 1538, the Henry VIII government, through his minister Thomas Cromwell, instituted a requirement for parishes within the City of London to report weekly on deaths. The government was particularly interested in early warnings of the plague epidemic. From 1728 onwards the age of the deceased was also recorded. These weekly Church documents, the Bills of Mortality, were prepared till 1859. 

McKeown considered using these data but decided they were not fit for purpose. Nevertheless, various scholars have estimated life expectancy in London and England using these registers. For instance, in 1960, D.F. Renn estimated rural England life expectancy at 31.2 years by around 1700. A 2006 paper by Robert Woods lists many estimates made of that period, often much lower than 30 years. In general, data from the registers leads us to a stylised life expectancy of 30 years in 1700 England.

4. Wrigley-Schofield adjustments

In 1981, Wrigley and Schofield published “The Population History of England 1541-1871”, using parish data that were adjusted statistically based in various assumptions. They concluded that British life expectancy had reached 41.56 years in 1578 itself and 42.7 years in 1583. They also argued that fertility rates in England increased sharply before 1800, leading to a population boom. Let’s call these the W-S adjustments.

5. The W-S adjustments must be rejected

There is considerable evidence from across the world that life expectancy was much lower than 30 years – in the 20s – during much of the pre-industrial era. India’s life expectancy was around 25 years till 1925, after which it started increasing slightly along with urbanisation. 

W-S claimed that infant mortality was fairly low during the pre-1838 period: “the average infant mortality rate for the 13-parish reconstitution sample [of W-S] for 1600 to 1749 was in the range of 161 to 169 per 1,000” (cited in a 1993 paper by Peter Razzell). Upon applying a correction, Razzell found that the true infant mortality rate of England in that period was between 250 and 340 per 1,000”. That is more consistent with the high mortality experience across the world in the pre-industrial period.

Next, W-S claimed that between about 1750 and about 1815, the crude birth rate in England rose 24% through early marriage. This doesn’t make sense since no similar increase in birth rates occurred elsewhere in Europe. Cormac Ó Grada observed in 1983 that a stock-take “of research on European historical demography by Michael Flinn concludes that ‘only in a few areas can rising fertility or earlier marriage effectively have contributed more than very marginally to the acceleration of population growth rates’”. A 1983 paper by Peter H. Lindert showed that the W-S claim was inconsistent with the rest of Europe – it “contrasts with the contemporaneous decline in fertility in France, Norway, Sweden, and Finland”. Lindert then showed that “the entire baby boom” in W-S estimates “emerges from their technical final adjustments, not from … data”. He showed that W-S had inflated the birth rate from 27.99/1000 in the raw data for 1814-1818 all the way to 41.92/1000 (an increase of 40%).

We must therefore reject the W-S adjustments. Logically, also, high life expectancy in the pre-1700 period doesn’t stack up. We know from Bills of Mortality that smallpox was a major killer till 1800, after which the vaccine came in. Worms used to kill children, as well (there is archaeological evidence of medieval burial sites in England on this). Further, malaria and water borne diseases were prevalent in low lying marshes in East England till the 18th century when these marshes were reclaimed for agriculture. Finally, diseases like the plague periodically killed vast numbers of people. The claim that life expectancy in England in the 1580s was as high as 40 years, is illogical. 

6. Conclusion

The haze of data prior to 1838 can therefore be somewhat eased by using various corroborative data from across the world. Instead of trying to “see” things in parish data which simply never happened (the W-S adjustments), we should adopt a stylized life expectancy of approximately 30 years in 1700. Using this as a base, our main project now is to quantify the factors which led to the increase of 50 years in life expectancy in the West.

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