Citing William Fogel’s book “The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death”, Frederick von Blowhard on demographic differences between the British and American people during the Revolutionary War:
According to Fogel’s table 1.1., “Life Expectancy At Birth in Seven Nations, 1725-2100,” Americans had an interpolated life expectancy in 1775 of 53.5 years. Citizens of “England or UK” had an interpolated life expectancy in 1775 of 36.5 years.
He comments:
Given that most Americans of the Revolutionary War period were of British extraction and could hardly have been ignorant of conditions there, it must have been as plain as the nose on their faces that people lived far longer, ate far better and grew up more sturdily in the Colonies than in the Mother Country. So when the British government started tightening the screws on the colonies in the wake of the French and Indian wars, the mental calculation of the colonists must have been pretty simple: “Let me get this straight: you British aristocrats, in your infinite wisdom, want to make us Americans more like the average British working man? In short, you want us to live as poorly as you do? I think not, if I have anything to say about it. Martha, what did you do with my rifle?”