Cheer up - it's good to be alive.

If we were living in Alexandria in year 0, Kyoto during the samurai era, Stockholm in 1655, or Paris during Napoleon's reign, each of us would have had a coin flip's chance of surviving adolescence. Maybe we wouldn't have survived our own births. Maybe we would have fallen victim to famine, sickness, war, infection, labor, or an abundance of other adverse conditions.

From 500 BC to 1900 AD, death reigned supreme. The world's average youth mortality rate, defined as death before age 15, was 46.7%. Additionally, one-quarter of all infants didn't reach their first birthdays.

For 2400 years, your odds of reaching your 15th birthday were reduced to the spin of a roulette wheel. But over the last century, everything changed.

By 1950, the global youth mortality rate had nearly been cut in half to 27%. In 2017, we hit 4.6%. Somalia, which currently boasts the world's highest youth mortality rate at 14.8%, sits at just 1/3 of the global average from ~100 years earlier.

In 2022, the death of a child is a tragic occurrence. In 1822, it was a normal part of daily life. We can't comprehend a world where early deaths were so common, yet that was the real world for millennia.

Static mortality rates for centuries, then a 90% decline in just a few generations. Insane progress.

Full article:

https://www.youngmoney.co/p/time-alive