Barring unforeseen events, the new class of ‘24s will live longer than the first class of ‘24s…
According to the most recent stats, Dartmouth students who stay in the U.S. can expect – on average – to live over three quarters of a century.
The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics pegs the current average U.S. life expectancy – in 2018 – at 78.3 years. This is a small drop from earlier years – based in part of the opioid crisis and a rise in “despair.”
In contrast, Legacy.com says life expectancy for individuals living between 1800 and 1850 – the era in which the Class of 1824 lived – was a mere 38 years.
By this measure, the men of the Class of 1824 were above average – collectively, they had an average life span of 64.2 years. Two easy explanations for this longevity – they had already made it past childhood and they didn’t have a war to fight in.
Undoubtedly, some ‘24s whose families had been in the U.S a while had grandfathers who fought in the Revolutionary War. Some ‘24s had sons who fought in the Civil War, likely some of whom fought for the Union and others who fought against it. (A small but significant number of ‘1824s moved South.)
Coincidentally, Reverend David Perry (1798-1876) – a member of the Class of 1876 – backs up the Legacy.com numbers through his own analysis of the deaths in his parish from January 1, 1831 to January 1, 1842. In a published copy of a sermon, he says:
To contemplate the past, is sometimes profitable. Often it is necessary, in order to gain impressive views of the sad changes which death is making in the circle of our friends and neighbors.
…It is true, that here and there one of a former generation lingers among us, as a connecting link between the present and the past. They still survive to tell their children’s children of the events of “by gone days.” But, alas! How few there are of this description, compared with the number of those, who were living among us eleven years ago…
According to the record I have kept, there have been in the town, during the past eleven years, two hundred and seventy-three deaths. Allowing the average number of the population, during this time, to have been fourteen hundred, which would not probably vary much from the truth, the number of deaths has been a little less than one fifth, or one to every family of five persons…
According to Perry’s list of ages of the 273 who have died:
| Infants or children (less than a year old) | 44 |
| Over a year old and less than five | 25 |
| Over five and under 15 | 12 |
| 15 – 25 | 29 |
| 25 –35 | 32 |
| 35 – 45 | 16 |
| 45 – 55 | 18 |
| 55 – 65 | 25 |
| 65 – 75 | 18 |
| 85 – 95 | 11 |
| 99 | 1 |
| 103 | 1 |
Perry concludes “Calling the age of those under a year nothing, and not reckoning the odd months of the remainder and the average of the two hundred and seventy three, would be a little over thirty-eight. By this mode of computation, we find that as many die under thirty-eight years of age, as there are that exceed that period.”
Source: Perry, David. A Sermon Delivered in the Congregational Meeting House in Hollis, NH, January 2, 1842 (Google Books)
As an aside, Dartmouth is the only Ivy to offer an undergraduate Major today in Geography; Quantitative Social Science (QSS) is another relatively new degree offering. If there are any readers with Geography or QSS skills that want to crunch the numbers here and identify the probability of living to 64.2 for this group after making past the age of 18 – be my guest!
