Nobody Here but Us Six Billion - Geography - page 177

Average life expectancy (the number of years a newborn could expect to live) was low.
How low? Well, today the average citizen of France can expect to live 78 years. But church
and cemetery records suggest that in the 1600s, French life expectancy was about 35 years.
On average, therefore, people died young. Many never reached reproductive age, and those
who did tended not to live that many years during their fertile time of life.
Human societies have typically responded to high death rates by having high birth rates, and the time
prior to 1650 was no exception. Factors that contributed to high birth rates included the following:
Most families farmed for a living, so more children meant more hands to do the manual
labor that was necessary in those days before widespread use of machinery.
Retirement pensions, 401(k)s, life insurance, and social security checks were unknown.
Having children (and the more, the better) guaranteed there would be somebody to look after
you if you were fortunate enough to reach old age.
Given short life expectancy and need for children, people — especially females — married
young. Most women were wed by their mid-to-late teens and, not withstanding the often-fatal
rigors of childbirth, had been through a couple of pregnancies by age 20.
Virtually no country currently experiences this range of conditions in its entirety. Nevertheless, an
understanding of these circumstances is very important because they set the stage for other phases
that are very real in the present age.
Stage 2: Early expanding
Birth rates exceed death rates by a widening margin in this stage (see Figure 11-5). When that
happens, population does more than simply grow: It increases dramatically. Look again at Fig-
ure 11-3 and note the S-shaped curve of population growth. The conditions just described cor-
respond to the bottom — that is, early — half of the curve, when population was expanding at
faster and faster rates after years of being stationary.
Hence the name of this stage is early expanding, which nevertheless perplexes many people because,
as you can see on Figure 11-5, birth rates and death rates are declining throughout it. The key thing to
focus on in that diagram is the widening gap between birth rates and death rates that is characteristic
of this stage. Even though both rates are dropping, the gap between them is widening, birth rates be-
ing the higher of the two. Thus, population grows (expands).