Mortality and Longevity in Ireland

The single greatest achievement of previous generations has been to propagate life. Their most precious gift to the new-born is the means to prolong life. This volume takes a close look at how life was extended in Ireland from one generation to the next. It tells two quite different stories. The first story begins in the second half of the nineteenth century when the high rate of death in infancy and childhood in Ireland starts to fall dramatically year-on-year. The soul-testing tragedy of parents burying offspring becomes increasingly less routine until it is a rare event. Then, beginning in the 1970s but so gradual as to be imperceptible at first, older adults began to live longer, a trend that has accelerated until recent years. Individual lifetimes are extending far beyond the time required to rear the next generation. The original research reproduced in this volume highlights that the majority alive today in Ireland are projected to live to 90 years of age and beyond. This is a fundamental renegotiation of the equilibrium between our species and nature, which has been to the benefit of the individual. However, it has not entered popular consciousness as a triumph of possibilities for the individual but rather as a burden - a “pension time-bomb” or a crisis in healthcare or long-term care provision. Throughout history and prehistory man battled with man over the immediate necessities of life for kith and kin. Now these are in abundance, the new battlegrounds concern the resources to prolong life.