ABSTRACT
This chapter opens with the figures and theories that explain the high population growth of the English colonies. But what was the everyday life of all these people. "Explosive" best describes the population growth of the American colonies. The rate of natural increase for white colonists is placed between 26 and 30 percent a decade, which accounts for most of the 34.5 percent rate of population growth per decade. In the southern colonies immigration in this case the importation of slaves and indentured servants did have a crucial effect on population growth. Three demographic characteristics of the colonial population are worth noting. First, it was young. After the earliest years of settlement, when primarily adults arrived, between 40 and 50 percent of the colonial population was under the age of sixteen and only 2 percent over sixty-five. Finally, life expectancy in New England, and by the mid-eighteenth century in all colonies, was much higher than in any contemporary European nation.
