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Fans of Star Trek will recognize the headline above as Mr. Spock's standard salutation. But even without a Vulcan blessing, Harvard graduates of the past half-century are living longer than those of earlier vintage.

How much longer? John C. Robbins '42, a New York management consultant, began mulling that question after a courtside chat at the New Canaan Country Club, where he, classmate Arthur Viner, and other septuagenarian tennis addicts were competing in a weekly round-robin.

Between sets, Robbins and Viner started talking about their fifty-fifth reunion, coming up this June. "When we graduated," observed Viner, "the fifty-fifth reunion class would have been that of 1887."

Both pondered this sobering thought.

"How many of them were in any shape to play tennis in 1942?" mused Robbins.

"What proportion even lived into their seventies?" mused Viner.

*

"That question bounced around in my mind with irritating stubbornness for a month before I determined to find the answer," Robbins recalls. Assisted by staffers from the Alumni Records Office and the University Development Office, he started checking survival rates among various College classes. The long-term shift was dramatic. Of the first graduating class in 1642--just 300 years ahead of Robbins's class--only 30 percent were alive 50 years after graduation. The class of 1942 inverted that proportion: at its fiftieth reunion, 70 percent of its members had survived.

Robbins plotted 50-year survival rates for 10 classes, spanning three centuries. "Rates remained fairly level for the first two centuries," he reports, "with some ups and downs caused mainly, I think, by the small size of seventeenth-century classes, which defy statistically significant analysis. Between the class of 1861 and the class of 1892 the rate starts climbing. It maintains its upward slope right up to the class of 1942. To an even greater extent than Arthur and I surmised on the tennis court, we Harvard men have grown healthier."

Robbins adds these class notes:

Class of 1942: "We had 90 percent alive at the time of our twenty-fifth reunion. The frequency of obituaries didn't start to rise until we had been out for 35 years. The 710 of us alive at our fiftieth reunion represented almost exactly 70 percent."

Class of 1927: "The survival rate to the fiftieth was 60 percent, 10 percentage points below ours. I leave it to public-health experts to explain the change in longevity over a mere decade and a half, but I strongly suspect that the credit belongs to the sulfas, penicillin, and other antibiotic drugs that began to emerge from pharmaceutical labs about the time our class graduated."

Class of 1917: "At its twenty-fifth, this class had almost as high a proportion of living members as we did 25 years later (86 percent vs. 90 percent).* However, 1917's survival rate soon began to drop. By the fiftieth only 52 percent of the class was alive."

Class of 1892: "As with 1917, 86 percent still survived at the twenty-fifth. But only 45 percent were still alive at the fiftieth."

Class of 1861: "Like 1942 and 1917, this class graduated as war began; war deaths reduced its 83 living graduates to 72 within five years of graduation. After 50 years, only 35 percent of the class survived."

Classes of 1842, 1792, 1742, and 1692: "These classes had 50-year survival rates of 36 percent, 38 percent, 24 percent, and 50 percent. The wide swing in the last two cases may be the result of small class size. The class of 1692, I think, epitomizes the life expectancy patterns of eras before our own. Of its six members, three died before they were 40, well before the class was 20 years out of college. Each of the others lived on for at least 35 more years. In those days, if you were tough enough to withstand the perils and infections of childhood and early adulthood, you had a probability of living to a ripe old age."

Class of 1642: "Nine young men took degrees. Of the seven whose histories can be traced, only two were alive 50 years later."

*

"I know enough about demographic studies to be aware of my delinquency from strict standards," says Robbins. "I arbitrarily selected the classes I reviewed. Certain records are limited to alumni who took degrees. And since Old Harvard was all-male, the data do not include women."

Matching class survival rates against life expectancy data for American males born between 1830 and 1920, Robbins found Harvard graduates outpacing the national average--"presumably because we represent the most affluent segment of society; because we tend to live in the safest, most salubrious neighborhoods; and probably because we have been trained and educated to take care of ourselves and extend the span of our lives.

"The ability to go on playing tennis at our advanced stage of life," adds Robbins, "is pure lagniappe."

~ Primus IV

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