For more context, I believe the average lifespan of the era was nearer 40.

Tichy · on Aug 13, 2011

Average lifespan is a pretty useless number because of all the infant deaths, though.

mechanical_fish · on Aug 13, 2011

Yes. I went looking for life expectancy at 20 in 1830s France but could not find it via casual Googling.

EDIT: Ah, should have gone straight to Wolfram Alpha: The answer is that if you lived to be 20 odds were you'd live to 60. Unless, alas, you were Balzac.

http://m.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=life+expectancy+at+20+in+...

Alpha is the amateur demographer's dream. Just look at those tasty charts and graphs. Of course I didn't read closely enough to figure out where this data was coming from. ;)

john61 · on Aug 13, 2011

Yes, but mainly because of the baby mortality which has decreased very much since then. This has an huge effect on livespan statistics.