:some-controversy:

Upgraded from a comment

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      Average life expectancy can get extremely low when you have high infant mortality. Like if you survived childhood you could expect to live well past 32, but your data point gets outweighed if someone who has like 5 kids who don't survive to puberty. Without modern medicine a lot of shit can happen between "getting pregnant" and "your child turns 6." Of course there was also food precarity, frequent famines, and theft by landlords against peasants in extreme poverty.

      • Boisterous [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        War contributes too. Not as much obviously but China is famous for millions dying in wars, usually young men under 30.

        Don't start thinking you're the next incarnation of Jesus, folks.

        • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
          hexagon
          ·
          2 years ago

          I believe war is the reason it dips below 32 at certain points. Ofc there is a bit of historical guesswork bc it's not like we have accurate comprehensive data from 1850.

      • anaesidemus [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        in many cultures children were often not named until they turned at least 6

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Fanshen by William Hinton has a lot of first-hand accounts of 30s and 40s rural China. Terrible conditions, and highlights how Chinese "landlords" of the time were far closer to feudal lords than some guy renting out his parents' old house in Milwaukee.

      • doctor_sociology [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        yeah. your shitty yuppie landlord will evict you to settle a debt.

        your chinese "landlord" will sell your children to settle a debt. the two are not the same.

        the basis of CCP power was not inveighing against the urban bourgeoisie, of which the majority of chinese had no idea even existed let alone felt oppressed by. it was actually mao that suggested allying with the patriotic, national bourgeois and small producers against the compradors and the landlords.

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Going back to back with civil war, famine, genocide, civil war, famine again will do that to you.