Improvement in Mortality Rates and Expectation of Life in the United States from 1890 to 1920

Abstract

The main thesis of this paper is to show that practically all the gain in mortality rates in U.S.A. during the last 30 yrs. has been made at ages under 52 and to stress the importance of focusing attention on the older ages. It is pointed out that perhaps the arts of hygiene, medicine and surgery have about reached their limit in contributing to improvement at the older ages and perhaps the chief hope, and one limited by the difficulty of putting it in practice, is through effective education concerning the much more potent factor of inheritance of longevity. The author also calls attention to and deprecates the unscientific practice of some authors in playing up in the press false expectations by the prediction of absurd improvements in the average span of life to such figures as 100, 150, and even 200 yrs. within the next century or 2.