CLAS 21405 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Infant Mortality
11 Sep 2017
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These were the people who were freeborn but did not own the land on which they lived and worked. There were certainly many independent farmers as well: while there were slaves as well, they were certainly not as numerous as often assumed. Instead, the primary mode of production in the country was dependent farmers. A very high infant mortality rate is another unfortunate fact of life in ancient rome: almost half of the babies born seem to have died before they reached the age or 1 or 2. Indeed, life expectancy at birth was around 25 years. If a child could reach the age of 2, the average life expectancy jumped to 35 years: life expectancy also certainly varied according to social status, without public healthcare, people who could afford medical care had longer lives. Without access to such care, people of the lower social classes would on average die much younger.
