Monday, March 03, 2014

The Reduction in the Infant Mortality Rate Deserves Praise, Not Dismissal

I notice people saying "Hunter-gatherer life expectancy was only lower than those of modern Europeans and Americans because hunter-gatherers had a higher infant morality rate. When you factor out their higher infant mortality rate, you find that if a hunter-gatherer lived past his first year, he would have the the same life expectancy as that of a modern Western European."

First off, I find it very conspicuous that they talk about the hunter-gatherers' high infant mortality rates as if it's no big deal. It's like, "Yeah, a large percentage of the hunter-gatherer population dies before reaching 50, but most of those people die as babies, so no big deal!" Likewise, they scoff at the modern First World's considerably lower infant mortality rate as if that's nothing. Contrary to those people, I think the reduction in the infant mortality rate is a tremendous achievement. If not for that reduction in the infant mortality rate, I might have died as an infant and not been able to write all this.

Secondly, when archaeologists look at the mass burial sites of hunter-gatherers, they can ascertain the age at which someone died by looking at the bones. Amidst the remains, they find people in their twenties, thirties, and forties, but it's extremely rare to find the remains of someone who died in his or her fifties, sixties, or seventies. This does indicate that, even if someone born into a hunter-gatherer society survived past infancy, that person would still have a lower life expectancy than a modern American or European.