You might have to work forever: The honest reality about Social Security and retirement

[hfojvt]

72. depends on how you define "relatively new"

Certainly many people were living long past the age of 32 over 300 years ago.

Here are some of my relatives (although I cannot vouch for records from before 1600)

Thomas Upson 1600-1655 55 years
Richard Upson 1575-1635 60 years
Elizabeth Fuller 1626-1714 88 years
John Plumb 1594 - 1648 54 years
Mary Baldwin 1625 - 1707 82 years
John Baldwin 1470 - 1545 75 years
Michael Hauser 1624-1687 63 years
Anna Dreher 1624-1695 71 years
Johann Rees 1586 - 1671 85 years

The same might be true of earlier times, although I have no records before 1600.

I looked those up, sort of at random (after all 55 is NOT exceptionally long) after I read a very respected historian say this about Native Americans in the year 1600 "Because of high infant mortality - an estimated 30 percent before the age of five (not much higher than rates in many parts of Europe) - life expectancy at birth was only 21 to 23 years (it has been estimated at 23.5 for Paris in the early eighteenth century), but those who survived to age 15 could expect to live to 35 - not much less than their English contemporaries." (TBY pp 26-27)

As much as I respect the guy, that is just nonsense, as my own research shows. Granted I am not looking at ALL of society there, but there certainly were more than a few who were living long past age 35.