Listener supported WNYC Studios.

It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Now we continue our WNYC Centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things.

This year-long series began in July on the day that WNYC turned 100 years old.

The show committed to passing forward the station's history of trying to be

interesting and educational and relevant to today in every year. We will try to keep it up for the

rest of this series as we are entering the new year with things number 54 and 55, 100 years of

birth rates and 100 years of life expectancy and causes of death in the United States.

We did birth rates on Thursday.

Today it's 100 years of life expectancy and causes of death.

This is both a remarkable and very relevant to today history.

Remarkable because if we go back to the year 1860 as a starting

point, the average life expectancy in the United States was, think about it, what would you

guess? It was less than 40 years old. According to the statistics website, Statista, people in 1860 in this country only lived on average to 39.4

years old.

20 years later in 1880, that was unchanged.

But then a remarkable increase began.

In 1905, life expectancy had increased to 50 years old. By 1935, it was up to 60 years old. In 1970, 70 years old. And just before the pandemic, in the mid-2010s, average U.S. life expectancy came close to 80 years old.

78.9 in 2015 is the exact number I have from

Statista. Of course, there have been differences by race and gender and income and other measures.

We'll get into those. Interestingly, the race and gender life expectancies have both been

...