I
The population between the ages of 65 and 74 in various countries (1900)[114] is as follows: United Kingdom—1,418,000 (including England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, of which England and Wales have 1,076,000; Scotland, 151,000; Ireland, 191,000); Germany—2,003,000; Prussia—1,185,000; France—2,246,000; Italy—1,435,000; United States—2,186,000.
The percentage of the population 65 and upwards in various countries is: United Kingdom—5 per cent (in England, Wales, and Scotland the percentage is 5 per cent, and in Ireland 6 per cent); Germany—5 per cent; France—8 per cent; Italy—6 per cent; United States—4 per cent.
Allyn A. Young[115] gives a table bringing out the following facts, taking the population of continental United States in 1900 as 75,994,575 as a basis:
| Age | Population | |||
| Native White | Foreign White | Colored | Total | |
| 70 | 123,818 | 66,941 | 18,213 | 208,972 |
| 75 | 79,214 | 40,886 | 10,061 | 130,161 |
| 80 | 42,095 | 19,559 | 6,995 | 68,649 |
| 85 | 17,271 | 7,059 | 2,854 | 27,184 |
| 90 | 4,551 | 1,796 | 1,190 | 7,539 |
| 95 | 833 | 430 | 766 | 2,029 |
| 99 | 195 | 168 | 255 | 618 |
Solomon S. Huebner[116] says a mortality table is a picture of a generation of individuals passing through time. He takes a group of them and traces their history year by year until all have died. The American Experience tables, almost exclusively used for computation by the old insurance companies, contain the following and are based on 100,000 individuals:
American Experience Table of Mortality
| Age | Number Living at Beginning of Designated Year | Number Dying during Designated Year |
| 70 | 38,569 | 2,391 |
| 71 | 36,178 | 2,448 |
| 72 | 33,730 | 2,487 |
| 73 | 31,243 | 2,505 |
| 74 | 28,738 | 2,501 |
| 75 | 26,237 | 2,476 |
| 76 | 23,761 | 2,431 |
| 77 | 21,330 | 2,369 |
| 78 | 18,961 | 2,291 |
| 79 | 16,670 | 2,196 |
| 80 | 14,474 | 2,091 |
| 81 | 12,383 | 1,964 |
| 82 | 10,419 | 1,816 |
| 83 | 8,603 | 1,648 |
| 84 | 6,955 | 1,470 |
| 85 | 5,485 | 1,292 |
| 86 | 4,193 | 1,114 |
| 87 | 3,079 | 933 |
| 88 | 2,146 | 744 |
| 89 | 1,402 | 555 |
| 90 | 847 | 385 |
| 91 | 462 | 246 |
| 92 | 216 | 137 |
| 93 | 79 | 58 |
| 94 | 21 | 18 |
| 95 | 3 | 3 |
In a table headed “Actuaries’ or Combined Experience Table of Mortality”[117] we have the following, taking 100,000 persons of ten years of age as the basis:
| Age | Probable Number of Persons Living | Expectation of Life |
| 70 | 35,837 | 8.54 |
| 75 | 24,100 | 6.48 |
| 80 | 13,290 | 4.78 |
| 85 | 5,417 | 3.36 |
| 90 | 1,319 | 2.11 |
| 95 | 89 | 1.12 |
| 99 | 1 | .50 |
In a very valuable state report[118] collating data from many sources for convenient use by the legislature it appears that the total number of persons 65 or over in Massachusetts by the census of April 1, 1915, was 189,047. It is generally supposed that during recent years the ratio of the aged to the total population has increased, but the tables show that in Massachusetts this did not hold true for the forty years ending in 1915. Mortality rates in most localities have fallen, but improved conditions of life have not affected the ratio of the aged to the total. Still, the duration of life has continuously increased, owing to medical and sanitary science and improved standards of living; and while the younger element of the population has been chiefly affected, the span of life of the aged has also been somewhat prolonged. Hence if this tendency continues the need of pensioning would increase.
A. Newsholme[119] presents a table giving the annual death rate, per million persons living, from a few prominent diseases, showing that there is a falling off in the death rate from old age. The author adds: “If this were a real falling off, it would not be an indisputable advantage as most people would prefer to die of old age. The decline under this head, however, is chiefly due to an improved specification of the causes of which the old die.” He gives copious statistics on the causes of death. He also gives an interesting table (p. 237) on the basis of 100,000 of each sex, showing graphically the steady decline in death liability and that the percentage of death is least at 12 and the early teens and soon after begins slightly to increase, falling somewhat more rapidly after 40 and then becoming a little less rapid after 70; while at 90, only 2,000 of the original 100,000 remain alive.
Director Sam L. Rogers of the Bureau of the Census published tables of vitality statistics[120] to show expectation of life at all ages for the population of New England, New York, New Jersey, Indiana, Michigan, and the District of Columbia (these being the mortality death registration states) on the basis of the population in 1910 and the mortality for three years. They are like life tables of insurance companies with the exception that they are based on the whole population. According to these tables the average expectation of life for males at birth is 49.9 years; for females, 52.2. Expectation of white males reaches its maximum at the age of 2 (57.7 years). At the age of 12, it is 59.2 years; at 25, 39.4; at 40, 28.3; at 50, 21.2; at 60, 14.6; at 70, 9.1; at 80, 5.2 years. During the first month of life the death rate of native white boys is nearly 28 per cent higher than that for girls. The twelfth year seems to be the healthiest for the native whites and thereafter there is continuous increase in the death rate. Expectation of life is not the same as saying that a man has an even chance of living that number of years, because expectation represents the average remaining length of life at any given age in a stationary population. A native white male child at birth has one chance in two of reaching sixty. At the end of his first year he has more than an even chance of reaching sixty-four. At forty-two he has an even chance of attaining seventy. At all ages women live longer than men and expectation in the country at all ages is distinctly greater than in the city.
R. Henderson’s work[121] sets forth the theoretical relations with reference to the duration of human life, describing those mortality tables that have had the greatest influence on the development of the science of life contingency and its applications in this country. The author establishes a connection between mortality tables and mortality statistics and tells how to interpret the latter. The methods of constructing mortality tables from census and death returns and from insurance experience are then taken up. The writer deals only with life contingencies and not at all with monetary applications and gives us a new table. “The present value of a sum of money payable at death cannot be properly calculated in assuming it to be payable at the end of a definite period equal to the expectation of life.” Nor can the present value of a life annuity be calculated by assuming it to be certainly payable for that period.
W. S. Rankin[122] tells how he applies vital statistics to sick towns or cities in a way to first restore consciousness by telling them just where they stand relatively with regard to death rates and second to bring about reforms. He has various charts and diagrams. The opinion of prominent people in every community is, in general, that their health conditions are good, but when asked what the death rate is they can give no answer. One community compelled a railroad to build and maintain an expensive overhead bridge at a cost of $1,500 a year to prevent one death and the aldermen appropriated only $150 to prevent fifty deaths. The first thing in treating sick social organisms is to restore consciousness.
Alexander Graham Bell[123] in the study of a family which is almost classic found that the average duration of life was 34.6 years; 35.2 per cent of these persons died before they were 20 years of age, and 7.3 per cent lived to be 80 or older. A second danger period was found in adolescence, ending at 23. Both sexes showed an increase of deaths during adolescence. More females than males lived to be 95. But the fathers, on the average, lived longer than the mothers and the children born between four and eight years after the marriage of their parents lived longer than those born later. Those who live to be old come from long-lived parents. The long-lived seem to inherit disease-resisting qualities and also are more fecund than the short-lived. He says[124] that in this family mothers who lived to extreme old age had, on the average, larger families than those who died earlier in life, for example, those who died before forty had, on the average, only three to four children apiece. The long-lived proportion is practically doubled when one parent lives to be old and quadrupled when both parents do so. The people who lived to be old represented the disease-resistant strain of their generation and on account of their superior fecundity this quality is distributed largely throughout the population. “A very large proportion of each generation is sprung from a very small proportion of the preceding generation; namely, from the people who lived to old age. The members of the short-lived group come from the short-lived parents. The children of the long-lived parents are on the average stronger, more vigorous, and longer-lived than the children of others, and there were more of them per family.”
Scott Nearing[125] says that the years from 45 to 60 or 65 should be the most valuable ones from the social point of view. He reminds us that if the average length of life were doubled the population would in a generation double without any increase in the birth rate. The average length of life in the leading countries of the world varies much. In Sweden, for males it is 53.9; France, 45.7; England and Wales, 44.1; Massachusetts, 44.1; India, 23.0. Men born in America of native white parents live on the average only 31 years; those born of foreign white parents, 29.1 years. Men in the modern cities die when they are one score and ten. There is a great difference in occupations: for shoemakers the death rate per thousand is 8.7; farmers, 11.02; tailors, 13.65; cigar and tobacco makers, 21.67; servants, 21.78; and laborers, 22.3. Such figures suggest the dangerous occupations. As to the length of the working life, from 15 to 65, out of every one thousand males living at the age of 15, 440 will survive to the age of 65, while the rest will have fallen out for some cause. So society has lost more than half its working force at the end of the working period. In the 16th century the average length of life he estimates at 21.2 years; in the 17th, 25.7; in the 18th, 33.6; and in the 19th, nearly 40 years. Finkenberg thinks that in the 16th century it was between 18 and 20 years; at the close of the 18th, over 30; while to-day it is from 38 to 40. We have no data for the United States as a whole that are of any value. Among males in England the average length of life is increasing at the rate of 14 years per century; France, 10; Denmark, 25; Massachusetts, 14. Although these figures are only approximations, Nearing thinks life is probably twice as long as it was a few centuries ago.
Irving Fisher[126] says in Europe the span of life is double that in India. The death rate in Dublin is twice that of Amsterdam and three times that of rural Michigan. Life is probably twice as long as it was three or four centuries ago and is increasing more rapidly now than ever. The rate of progress is very variable in different countries, the maximum being in Prussia. Improvement is most in females and the rate of increase is accelerated perhaps four years a century on the whole, although during the last three-quarters of the nineteenth century Fisher thinks it has increased nine years. At least fourteen years could be added to human life by eliminating preventable diseases, which would be the equivalent of reducing the death rate about 23 per cent. In a table he shows that seven of the ninety causes of death are responsible for over one-half of the shortening of life. He gives us a diagram that shows where the saving of life has been and might be greatest. The area between the curves shows that from 1855 to 1897, 550,000 years were saved for a supposed group of 100,000 persons, or 5.5 years per person. The addition of 12.8 years to the lifetime of each of 100,000 persons might be divided into three groups, namely, that of preparation, the working period, and the decline. The chief cause of prolongation is found in new hygienic ideals.
Metchnikoff thought that the lengthening of human life would at once decrease the burden on the productive period, which is some 55 per cent of the total years lived—assuming the working period to be from 17 to 60—and that the latter limit would shift forward. As life becomes complex and as knowledge increases the period of preparation should be prolonged. Men should graduate later. Life should be lived on a larger scale, with more utilization of accumulated experience and less disastrous immaturity. Now we have to force young men into positions prematurely because of their vitality. Metchnikoff says “Old age, at present practically a useless burden on the community, will become a period of work valuable to it.” Human life will become much longer and the par value of old people will become much more important than it is to-day.
Willcox thinks the death rate in the United States is at least eighteen per thousand. Moreover, we have some three million persons always on the sick list, more among the old than the young since morbidity increases in age. But at least one-third are in the working period. The loss by consumptives alone is figured at sixty million dollars. Now, it costs no more to raise a man capable of living eighty years than it does to grow one who has the capacity of living only forty. Health means increased vitality and makes life, in Mallock’s phrase, better worth the living, for health is the first wealth. We can do much to raise American vitality.
Fisher adds[127] that in the United States the general death rate has steadily fallen for several decades, as is common in all civilized countries. Many think this means a gain in national vitality. This may be true for the younger age but the “gain has served to mask a loss of vitality at the older age periods. This latter phenomenon, a rising mortality in elderly life, is something almost peculiar to the United States.” In other lands this fall in death rate has been due not solely to the reduction of mortality in infancy and adult life, for most countries have improved their mortality at every age period. Probably this is due to “some unknown biologic influence or to the amalgamation of the various races that constitute our population. It must be ascribed in a broad sense to lack of adaptation to our rapidly developing civilization.” The American decreases in younger ages are not as great as in England and Wales and they change into increase at about the age of forty-five and continue to increase thereafter, while in England and Wales the decline occurs at all ages. In 1900 or thereabouts the death rates in the middle ages of life were heavier in the United States than in Prussia, France, Italy, and Sweden. Since then death rates in the United States at these ages have grown even greater.
Better hygienic methods, according to Fisher,[128] started with Pasteur, who said it was within the power of man to rid himself of every parasitic disease. Hygienists have followed this clue. The Roosevelt Conservation Committee in its report on national vitality and the summary of European life tables show that human life lengthened during the 17th and 18th centuries at the rate of only 4 years per century, while during the first three-quarters of the 19th it lengthened almost twice as fast and since that four times as fast, or about 17 years per century. If we could continue to increase life seventeen years a century, the world would soon be peopled with Methuselahs. We are witnessing a race between two tendencies, the reduction of the acute infections, such as typhoid, and an increase of the chronic or degenerative diseases, such as sclerosis, Bright’s disease, etc. The degenerative tendency appears more in evidence here than elsewhere. In Sweden the expectation of life increases at all ages. Even the nonagenarians have more years to live than did those of former days in the United States. We are freer from germs than our ancestors but our vital organs wear out sooner. And this degeneration of our bodies follows that of our habits. In England, where these diseases are not increasing, individual exercise out of doors probably has something to do with it. In Sweden individual hygiene is better cultivated than anywhere else in the world. It is the only land where public health includes private habits and touches the life of the people, especially through the school. The best statistics show that a large number of our young men and women suffer from diseases of heart, kidneys, lungs, and circulation, with impairment enough to consult a physician, that is, over half of our young men and women in active work and presumably selected for their work as fit, are found, although unaware of the fact themselves, to be in need of medical attention; while 37 per cent are on the road to impairment because of the use of too much alcohol, tobacco, etc. Now, a stitch in time saves nine. Thus the lesson to all of us is obvious.
I. M. Rubinow[129] says the problem of poverty among the old is connected with inability to find work because productive power has waned forever. American experience in tables of mortality shows that of 100 persons at the age of 20, 53 will reach 65; 12, 70; at which time the average expectation of life will be 8½ years. If we take 100 people at the age of 30, 53 will live to 65; 48 to 70. But this table was compiled half a century ago, although it is still used—to the great profit of insurance companies as expectation has greatly increased. Ten to fifteen years of life over sixty-five are assured to more than half all wage workers. In 1880 the percentage of persons 65 or over was 3.5; in 1890, 3.9; in 1900, 4.2; in 1910, 4.3. The number over 65 per 1000/15 increased from 54 to 60 in 1890, and to 63 in 1910. Employed males over 65 per 1000/15 constituted 50 in 1890; and in 1900, 47. Thus the production of old men is increased while the proportion of old men is declining. In 1880, of all old men over 65 years of age, 73.8 per cent were gainfully employed; in 1900, only 68.4 per cent. The total number of men over 65 in 1900 was 1,555,000. Thus economic progress in ten years meant an additional hundred thousand thrown out of employment. In agriculture, 6.1 per cent of the men employed are over 65; in the professions, 5.5 per cent; but in manufacture and mechanics, only 3.5 per cent; and in trade and transportation, 3 per cent. Thus old men are either thrown out or shifted to unskilled occupations. What does the “iron law” of the increase of old age dependency under a system of wage labor mean? It is wrong to seek the cause in exceptional misfortune or in psychological or ethical feeling. The author of “Old Age Dependencies in the United States” says after sixty men become dependent by easy stages—property, friends, relatives, and ambition go and only a few years of life remain, with death final. The wage-earner is swept from the class of hopeful, independent citizens into that of the helpless poor.
As to the population problem, Raymond Pearl has studied the ratio between births and deaths in France, Prussia, Bavaria, and England and Wales from 1913 to 1920[130] and finds that, in general, the birth ratios rose during the war—in England to the 100 per cent mark—and that immediately after the war was over the death-birth ratio began to drop rapidly in all countries. Vienna suffered perhaps more than any other city but made the best recovery, showing how promptly the growth of population tends to regulate itself back toward the normal after even so great a disturbance. Thus the war, which was the greatest depopulator since the epidemic of the Middle Ages, caused “only a momentary hesitation in the steady onward march of population growth.” If we take any given land area of fixed limits, there must necessarily be an upper limit to the number of people it can support, but this limit will be approached asymtotically and the most rapid rise will be midway between the upper and lower limit, namely, at that point where half the possible resources of subsistence have been drawn upon and utilized. The statistician must approach this problem as the astronomer does in calculating the complete orbit of a comet, that is, he must construct his curve from a limited number of specific data. If we study the curve of growth of population in this country, we find that we have long since passed the most rapid rate of increase. If we compare this with that of France, which is an old country and much nearer the upper limit than ours, which started near the lower asymtote only a century and a half ago; or compare it with that of Serbia, which is intermediate, all the statistics available conform with singular accuracy to the theoretic curve.
Professor Pearl concludes that this country has passed the point of most rapid increase, that this rate began to decline about April 1, 1914, when our population was 98,637,000, and that our upper limit will be reached about the year 2100, when the population will be 197,274,000 or nearly double what it is now, with about 66 persons per square mile. Our population will be then far less dense than in many other countries, but the latter are not self-supporting. He even estimates how many calories, vegetable and animal, each individual will require daily and compares this with the agricultural possibilities of the future. Such considerations lead him to stress the importance of birth control. This had long been practiced in France before the war, where the birth- and death-rate nearly balanced, so that industrial development simply raised the standard of living. Germany, on the other hand, encouraged the increase of her population by every means and her scheme was, when the pressure became too great, to facilitate the overflow of her surplus population elsewhere. “A stationary population where birth-rate and death-rate are made to balance is necessarily a population with a relative excess of persons in the higher age groups, not of much use as fighters, and a relative deficiency of persons in the lower age groups where the best fighters are. On the contrary, a people with a high birth-rate has a population with an excess of persons in the younger age groups.”
In his discussion of life tables Pearl starts with that of Glover based on the registration area of the United States in 1910. If we assume an original hundred thousand starting together at birth we note that at the beginning of the second year of life only 88,538 survive. In the next year 2446 drop out; the year following, 1062. At forty about 30,000 have passed away and the line descends with increasing rapidity until about eighty, when it drops more slowly till soon after the century mark all the original hundred thousand have passed away. Expectation of life is the mean or average number of persons surviving at a stated age. Pearl’s diagrams show that the expectation of life of those born in Breslau in the seventeenth century was very much lower than that of an individual born in the United States in 1910, the difference amounting to 18 years. At the age of ten it has sunk to 12; at twenty, to 10 years; at fifty, to 4. But the individual of eighty in Breslau in the seventeenth century could expect to live longer than the individual of the same age now in the United States. The same result is found if we compare United States tables now with those of England in the middle of the eighteenth century, where expectation was also less before and greater after eighty. Pearson’s study of Egyptian mummy cases two thousand years old shows that expectation there was far lower yet through all the early stages of life, although after seventy those who survived had a greatly increased expectation. Thus either man to-day is constitutionally fitter to survive or else he has made himself better conditions up to about the seventh decade. The reason why expectation increased after that period is because conditions were so unfavorable that all but the very most rugged succumbed earlier in life and the proportion of those who reached advanced age was far less than now. In Rome, during the first three or four centuries of the Christian era, the expectation was less yet until nearly sixty, after which it rose, and it is significant that expectation of life was far less under the conditions then prevailing for women than for men at all ages of life, which is the reverse of conditions now prevailing. In the Roman provinces, however, expectation was greater than in the Eternal City. In the Roman-African population, although there was greater mortality to about forty, expectation of life was superior after that age in the early part of the Christian era to what it now is.
In considering life tables that give the number of deaths occurring at each age, which give an S-shaped curve falling very rapidly before the end of the second year and reaching its highest subsequent point at seventy, Karl Pearson finds in this S-shaped curve five components which he typifies as five Deaths shooting with different weapons and with differing precision as the procession of human beings crosses the Bridge of Life. The first Death is a marksman of deadly aim and unremitting diligence who kills before as well as after birth. The second, who aims at childhood, has a very concentrated fire. The third, who shoots at youth, has not a very deadly or accurate weapon but one rather to be compared with a bow and arrow. The fire of the fourth marksman is slow, scattered, and not very destructive, as if from an old-fashioned blunderbus. The last Death plies the rifle, which none escape. Pearl justly criticises this conception because “no analysis of the deaths into natural divisions by causes or otherwise has yet been made such that the totals in the various groups would conform to these frequency curves.” Thus he holds that Pearson’s concept of the five deaths does not represent any biological reality but only demonstrates, as any other equally successful curve would do, that deaths do not occur chaotically but instead “in a regular manner capable of representation by mathematical function in respect of age.”