Life expectancy for factory laborers was seventeen in Manchester and fifteen in Liverpool.[21] Death rates were so high among the urban working classes that the population was only able to sustain itself because of the continual inflow of people from the surrounding countryside, and increasingly from Ireland. As northern towns and cities were the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution, this is clear evidence that economic growth and increasing real wages did not automatically lead to improvements in health via the invisible hand of the market. Instead, the rapidly growing urban population in
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