As these reforms were implemented, life expectancy in Ireland would rise to more than fifty years by the turn of the century. Within five years, mass starvation would contribute to the deaths of over one million people on the island, while a further one million would emigrate this also created a legacy of emigration from Ireland, which saw the population continue to fall until the mid-1900s, and the total population of the island is still well below its pre-famine level of 8.5 million people.įollowing the end of the Great Famine, life expectancy would begin to gradually increase in Ireland, as post-famine reforms would see improvements in the living standards of the country’s peasantry, most notably the Land Wars, a largely successful series of strikes, boycotts and protests aimed at reform of the country's agricultural land distribution, which began in the 1870s and lasted into the 20 th century. Additionally, authorities forcefully redirected much of the country's surplus grain to the British mainland, which exacerbated the situation. The famine came as a result of a Europe-wide potato blight, which had a disproportionally devastating impact on the Irish population due to the dependency on potatoes (particularly in the south and east), and the prevalence of a single variety of potato on the island that allowed the blight to spread faster than in other areas of Europe. However, this figure would see a dramatic decline with the beginning of the Great Famine in 1845, and dropped below 21 years in the second half of the decade (in 1849 alone, life expectancy fell to just 14 years). At the beginning of the 1840s, life expectancy from birth in Ireland was just over 38 years.
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