Relative Historical Constancy in Aging Before the Secular Shift

Since England is unique in the way we have discussed above and since it was from the English evidence^[15] that the model of the secular shift in aging was originally constructed (see Laslett 1984), the question of whether England has been typical is not without its importance. There would seem to be little doubt that this was so with respect to the increase in expectation of life at birth, the first of our aging variables. France and Sweden, whose curves

for the course of this statistic over time are also depicted in figure 1.3, show a steep or very steep rise similar to that for England, a rise that began at some point in the last decade of the nineteenth century or the first decade of the twentieth. In the case of Tuscany in figure 1.4, the resemblance to the curve for England is quite striking, rather surprising in view of very different conditions of health and welfare. There seems to have been a slow upward incline of expectation of life at birth in all Western countries during the nineteenth century before the secular shift, and the Scandinavian countries were well above England by the time the really steep ascent began. Such a circumstance might be taken as putting England into the median position. Longevity has been excellently assessed in all now-developed countries for this period, and it is possible to be confident that England can stand for the rest. And if this was so in the run-up to the secular shift and for the shift itself, why should it not have been so in earlier decades and centuries?

The same cannot be so easily pronounced for our second aging variable, traced by the lower graph in figure 1.3, increase in proportions over the age of 60. Here the English figures show a tendency to fall in the earlier nineteenth century, as is evident in table 1.3, putting the English graph for proportions of elderly well below those for France and Sweden, and this can be confirmed in other countries. The subsequent precipitate ascent in England may well exaggerate the abruptness of the aging transformation at the secular shift. Even in other English-speaking populations, the share of the old rose more slowly than in the "mother country," though their character as immigrant receivers may have something to do with this.

The contrast between English experience of growth in the weight of older people in the population at large is particularly marked in relation to France. But it is well known that the demographic transition itself was more diffuse in France than elsewhere, and it has to be expected that in this respect the secular shift would also be more diffuse in that country. The general allure , as the French would themselves say, of the French curves is quite similar to that of the English and the Scandinavian. With such a small sample and in so novel and uncertain an area of investigation, the correspondence between these graphs seems acceptable. I am prepared to regard the shape of the secular shift in England as an ideal type of that development, ideal type in the sense used by Max Weber. We shall return to this point when we come to discuss more revealing aging measures than those we have used so far.

As for the levelness of the lower plateau, which is a way of expressing the long-term constancy of these two aging variables in historic populations, the course taken by the graphs in figure 1.3 certainly suggests that in the long term relative stability can be assumed as well. It is here that the length of the record over time becomes highly significant, so that even the near half-millennium covered by the English data may appear somewhat inadequate.

But the line representing the English statistics of proportions over 60 is conspicuously flat for the complete run, and those for the other countries being compared are very much the same for their interludes of record. A survey of the quinquennial figures for England contained in table 1.3 shows that proportions varied between extremes of 10.08 percent (maximum) in the years 1716 to 1720 and 6.54 percent (minimum) in the 1820s and 1830s but that three-fourths of the values fell between 6.80 percent and 8.50 percent. In spite of differences in the later eighteenth century and earlier nineteenth century, the impression of constancy remains with respect to the weight of older persons in the population at large. But we shall find ourselves wondering whether this was quite so evident for the proportion of elderly persons in the adult as opposed to the whole population and whether the rise was as considerable at the secular shift in that respect.

The course of expectation of life at birth before the secular shift has a much less even appearance than the course of proportions of elderly: ups and downs succeed each other in the English figures in a way that recalls the heraldic description dancetty . Nevertheless, the claim for an underlying constancy seems strong in this matter too. Variation between extremes of 41.68 years (maximum) in the 1580s and 27.77 years (minimum) in the 1560s—the propinquity in date of the maximal peak and minimal trough should be noted—is accompanied by a concentration of two-thirds of the values between 35 and 40 years. When the graphs for expectation of life at birth are smoothed by the use of moving averages,^[16] they also have a decidedly even appearance. Work in progress at the Cambridge length of life project suggests a surprising stability over time in the longevity figures for elite groups, back to the later Middle Ages for British peers and members of Parliament, back to the beginning of the Christian era for Chinese mandarins. It seems safe to assume that the secular shift is properly represented by a sudden, precipitous rise from a lower plateau to a higher level in both dimensions.

The implications of these considerations for the historical demography of aging must be quite evident. Although they were subject to quite sharp fluctuations in life expectation at birth-and here the effects of epidemics, wars, and food shortages spring to mind—our ancestors never seem to have been subject to aging changes on anything like the scale that has been experienced by the populations going through the secular shift. Recovery in duration of life was rapid after episodes of disaster, though it must be remembered that this recovery consisted largely of better prospects for newly arrived infants and children. Proportions of elderly persons in the population at large remained fairly constant, showing the same tendency to revert to the average after rises and falls, for centuries on end as far as we can tell.

This conclusion is reinforced by demographic knowledge and demographic theory. Although we have had to recognize that no example of a population in what might be called a "natural" condition with respect to ag-

ing is or is likely to be available, demographers have had extremely wide experience of populations that had not yet entered the demographic transition, or are in its early stages and hence so far not much affected by the secular shift. Their aging characteristics are indeed plateaulike. Episodes of low fertility along with relatively low mortality cannot have lasted long enough among these populations for them to grow old in the dual fashion that has been described for the secular shift. This has to be the case, since pretransition populations had and still have high birth- and death rates by definition.