Bad Astronomy, Penn and Teller, etc.

[HungLikeJesus]

I didn't intend this to be a discussion of childhood death and disease, but it's actually quite interesting.

According to The Decline of Childhood Mortality, by Kenneth Hill, Department of Population Dynamics, School of Hygiene and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University:

One of the most dramatic and significant changes in the human condition over the last two centuries has been the sharp and sustained decline that has taken place in infant and child mortality. In the now-developed countries of Europe, North America and Oceania, the probability of dying by first birthday has declined from, in many cases, 200 per thousand live births to less than 10 per thousand live births in the span of 100 years. This transition has had, and continues to have, profound implications for the family and society. This chapter chronicles the trend, and examines a variety of explanations for it that have been proposed.

Note that these numbers are for death by first birthday. The report goes on to discuss childhood mortality for various periods and geographical regions. The older records are not as reliable as modern data, and what data does exist probably ignores the poor.

The British peerage (Hollingsworth 1964) provide the most complete and detailed sequence. The probability of dying by age five in the mid 16th century is around 250 per thousand live births, rising steadily to around 350 by the mid 17th century, before starting a steady decline to below 200 by the mid 18th century and around 100 by the mid 19th century.