An Estimate of the Expectation of Life in the United States in 1850

L IFE tables for the United States, based on the mortality experienced in the country as a whole, are available only since 1929-1931. Official tables are also available for the Original Death Registration States since 1900-1902 and for the Death Registration States of 1920 since that year, but these relate only to the designated geographic areas of the country. For the second half of the 19th Century, the existent life tables are even more restricted-being limited largely to Massachusetts (la). Since the latter tables are available for a number of time periods starting with 1850, they have often been used to trace the course of the expectation of life in the United States during the past century. However, the 1850 life table for Massachusetts (2) is deficient for general use in that only values of nm, and selected values of ea have been published. Moreover, since Massachusetts was one of the most urbanized States in the country, the mortality from infectious diseases may have been higher there than in most other areas. In consequence, the expectation of life was probably lower in Massachusetts than in the country as a whole. Indicative of this is the fact that in 1900-1902, the earliest period with reasonably comparable data, the expectation of life at birth for white males in Massachusetts was about two years less than that in the Original Death Registration States (lb). Fortunately, 1850 mortality data are also available for Maryland (2), and these data averaged with those for Massachusetts appear to approximate the experience in the United States as a whole. For males, the resulting estimate of the expectation of life at birth in the United States exceeds that for Massachusetts by the same amount as in 1900-1902; for females, the differential in 1850 is 0.8 years greater than in the recent period.