What was the average lifespan of middle-class persons in mid-19th century Britain?
During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The percentage of the children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730-1749 to 31.8% in 1810-1829.[20] Public health measures are credited with much of the recent increase in life expectancy. During the 20th century, the average lifespan in the United States increased by more than 30 years; 25 years of which can be attributed to advances in public health.[21] In order to assess the quality of these additional years of life, health expectancies have been calculated since some thirty years. Since 2001, the World Health Organization is publishing a statistics called Healthy life expectancy (HALE) defined as the average number that a person can expect to live in “full health” by taking into account the years lived in less than full health due to disease and/or injury. Since 2004, Eurostat is yearly publishing a statistics called Healthy Life Years (HLY) based on rep
