Comment by esperent
4 days ago
> Historically in agrarian societies few people reached this point so it wasn’t generally a significant burden to support them
This isn't true.
https://www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/08/15/three-scor...
> ...in England, average life expectancy at birth varied between 35 and 40 years in the centuries between 1600 and 1800. It is a common misconception that, when life expectancy was so low, there must have been very few old people. In fact, the most common age for adult deaths was around 70 years, in line with the Biblical three score years and ten.
You misunderstood what I was describing. 70 year olds can be quite productive doing manual labor in a way that basically no 90 year olds can.
Except for, perhaps, Clint Eastwood.
I was thinking about John B Goodenough
Or Michaelangelo.
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Yep, infant mortality skews the average and has often led to this kind of misconception