Untitled

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8895, 2 December 1914, Page 7

Do people live longer nowadays than in times past? An affirmative answer is supplied by tho Government Statistician, in a highly interesting series of tables published in the “New Zealand Year Book” for 1914. Working on the basis of the census returns for the various quinquennial periods, the statisticians publish tho results of their inquiry into two periods, that of 1001-5 and 1906-10. Enough is published to show that the nearer the statisticians get to the present day, the longer is the expectation of life and the less the rate of mortality. To take one sample from the tables showing the expectation of life (calculated upon mortality figures). It is shown that a male child aged one has a fair chance, on statistical evidence of what has happened before, to live another 63.125 years. At tho age of 21 a' young man may expect to live another 46 years 4 months. At 40 his expectation of lif© is set down at 31 i years, and if he has survived the bufferings of existence till the age of 58, the statisticians say he is likely, on the average, to bp “good” for another 16.872 years. . A woman, of 50 has longer expectation of life, the period being calculated at 18.220 years.