Born ThenLife in the 1880s
Be born somewhere between 1880 and 1889, weighted by real births, and live five lives from that year on.
The numbers
The world had about 1.5 billion people, and about 0.58 billion babies were born in the 1880s. A child born then could expect, on world average, about 33 years of life; 42% of children died before turning five. Women had about 5.7 children each. Roughly 31% of adults could read, and 20% of people lived in towns and cities. The places with the most births were China (25%), India (19%), Russia (5%), USA (4%), Germany (3%).
From Gapminder and the World Bank, averaged over the world and weighted by births; before 1950 most are estimates. How it works
What happened
- Slavery in Brazil 1800–1888
- British emigration to the colonies and America 1815–1913
- Indian indenture system 1834–1917
- German emigration to the Americas 1840–1893
- Chinese emigration from Guangdong and Fujian 1845–1913
- Irish emigration after the Famine 1852–1913
- Third plague pandemic 1855–1930
- French conquest of Vietnam 1858–1887
- Meiji Restoration 1868–1889
- Polish emigration "za chlebem" 1870–1913
- Reforms of King Chulalongkorn 1874–1910
- Great Italian emigration 1880–1913
- Pogroms in the Russian Empire 1881–1906
- Anglo-Egyptian War and British occupation 1882
- Eruption of Krakatoa 1883
- Third Anglo-Burmese War and annexation 1885–1887
- Atrocities in the Congo Free State 1885–1908
- Great Ethiopian Famine 1888–1892
- African rinderpest epizootic 1888–1897
- 1889–1890 flu pandemic ("Russian flu") 1889–1890