[Barrin92]

that's actually a terrible metric. During the height of the early industrial revolution the life expectancy in Liverpool fell to 25(!) years, despite higher caloric intake as people were basically put through a manual labour meatgrinder.

This is actually the glamorized superficial narrative that you're accusing the author of. More calories = progress, graphs go up = everyone happy.

For most of industrialisation life was actually extremely harsh, monotonous, life expectancy fell, communal ties were destroyed and that's the case in much of the developing world today. Yuval Noah Harari gives a good overview in Sapiens as well.

https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2013/09/13/did-livin...

[ridewinter]

How has life expectancy gone since the height of the early industrial revolution? How has life expectancy gone in the developing world of our day?

I believe Yuval Noah writes mostly about pre-agricultural life, not pre-industrial life.