The Assurance of Lives has often been regarded, by weak-minded persons,
as an interference with the ways of Providence, which is highly
reprehensible. But it can be shown that calculation of lives can be
averaged with certainty. Mr. Babbage, in his work on the Assurance of
Lives, observes: “Nothing is more proverbially uncertain than the
duration of human life, where the maxim is applied to an individual; yet
there are few things less subject to fluctuation than the average
duration of a multitude of individuals. The number of deaths happening
amongst persons of our own acquaintance is frequently very different in
different years; and it is not an uncommon event that this number shall
be double, treble, or even many times larger in one year than in the
next succeeding. If we consider larger societies of individuals, as the
inhabitants of a village or small town, the number of deaths is more
uniform; and in still larger bodies, as among the inhabitants of a
kingdom, the uniformity is such, that the excess of deaths in any year
above the average number seldom exceeds a small fractional part of the
whole. In the two periods, each of fifteen years, beginning at 1780, the
number of deaths occurring in England and Wales in any year did not fall
short of, or exceed, the average number one-thirteenth part of the
whole; nor did the number dying in any year differ from the number of
those dying in the next by a tenth part.”
In a paper on Life Assurance, in the _Edinburgh Review_, the Average
Mortality of Europe is thus stated: “In England 1 person dies annually
in every 45; in France, 1 in every 42; in Prussia, 1 in every 38; in
Austria, 1 in every 33; in Russia, 1 in every 28. Thus England exhibits
the lowest mortality; and the state of the public health is so improved,
that the present duration of existence may be regarded (in contrast to
what it was a hundred years ago) as, in round numbers, _four to three_.”
The Registrar-General gives the following statistical results: “The
average age of life is 33⅓ years. One-fourth of the born die before they
reach the age of seven years, and the half before the seventeenth year.
Out of 100 persons, only six reach the age of 60 years and upwards,
while only 1 in 1000 reaches the age of 100 years. Out of 500, only 1
attains 80 years. Out of the thousand million living persons,
330,000,000 die annually, 91,000 daily, 3730 every hour, 60 every
minute, consequently 1 every second. The loss is, however, balanced by
the gain in new births. Tall men are supposed to live longer than short
ones. Women are generally stronger than men until their fiftieth year,
afterwards less so. Marriages are in proportion to single life
(bachelors and spinsters) as 100:75. Both births and deaths are more
frequent in the night than in the day.”