Halloween is a celebration of death and fear, but it also reveals how much safer and healthier life has become. This article shows how child mortality, especially from pedestrian accidents, has declined dramatically in recent decades. It also explores how other causes of death, such as disease and violence, have become less common thanks to human progress.

This Halloween, you might see your neighbors’ front yards decorated with faux tombstones and witness several children dressed as ghosts, skeletons, zombies, or other symbols of death. Thankfully, today’s trick-or-treaters can almost all expect to remain among the living until old age. But back when the holiday tradition of children going door-to-door in spooky costumes originated, death was often close at hand, and the young were particularly at risk.

Halloween’s origins are closely linked to concerns about death. The holiday arose out of All Souls’ Day, a Christian commemoration for the deceased falling on November 2 that is also simply called the Day of the Dead. In the Middle Ages, this observance was often fused with another church feast called All Saints’ Day or All Hallows’ Day on November 1. The night before, called All Hallows’ Eve—now shortened to Halloween—in parts of medieval Britain, children and people who were poor would visit their wealthier neighbors and receive “soul cakes,” round pastries with a cross shape on them. In exchange, they promised to pray for the cake-givers’ dead relatives. This was called “souling.”

In Ireland and Scotland, Halloween also incorporated some aspects of an old Celtic pagan tradition called Samhain, including bonfires and masquerades. Samhain was also associated with death and sometimes called the feast of the dead. Eventually the traditions of wearing masks and of going door-to-door for treats combined, and young people in Ireland and Scotland took part in a practice called “guising” that we now call trick-or-treating. Dressing as ghouls and other folkloric incarnations of death became popular.

In the 1800s, an influx of Irish immigrants is thought to have popularized this Halloween tradition in the United States. The phrase “trick-or-treating” dates to at least the 1920s, when Halloween pranks or tricks also became a popular pastime. But according to National Geographic, “Trick-or-treating became widespread in the U.S. after World War II, driven by the country’s suburbanization that allowed kids to safely travel door to door seeking candy from their neighbors.”

And just how safe today’s trick-or-treaters are, especially compared to the trick-or-treaters of years past, is underappreciated. Despite the occasional public panic about razor blades in candy, malicious tampering with Halloween treats is remarkably rare, especially given that upward of 70 percent of U.S. households hand out candy on Halloween each year.

The biggest danger to today’s trick-or-treaters is simply crossing streets. But while Halloween is the deadliest night of the year for children being struck by cars, there is heartening news: annual child pedestrian deaths have declined dramatically. The number of pedestrian deaths among children aged 13 or younger fell from 1,632 in 1975 to 144 in 2020. The steep decline is even more impressive when one considers that it occurred as the total number of people and cars in the country has increased substantially.

Today’s children are thus safer as they venture out on Halloween than the last few generations of trick-or-treaters were. And, of course, when compared to the world of the very first children to celebrate Halloween, the modern age is by many measures less dangerous, especially for the young. In medieval England, when “souling” began, the typical life expectancy for ducal families was merely 24 years for men and 33 for women. While data from the era is sparse, among non-noble families in Ireland and Scotland, where “guising” began, living conditions and mortality rates may have been far worse.

It is estimated that between 30 and 50 percent of medieval children did not survive infancy, let alone childhood, with many dying from diseases that are easily preventable or treatable today. Given that context, the medieval preoccupation with death that helped give rise to traditions like Halloween is quite understandable. Life expectancy was lower for everyone, even adult royalty: the mean life expectancy of the kings of Scotland and England who reigned between the years 1000 and 1600 was 51 and 48 years, respectively. Before the discovery of the germ theory of disease, the wealthy, along with “physicians and their kids lived the same amount of time as everybody else,” according to Nobel laureate Angus Deaton.

In 1850, during the wave of Irish immigration to the United States that popularized Halloween, little progress had been made for the masses: white Americans could expect to live only 25.5 years—similar to what a medieval ducal family could expect. (And for African Americans, life expectancy was just 21.4 years.)

But the wealth explosion after the Industrial Revolution soon funded widespread progress in sanitation. That reduced the spread of diarrheal diseases, a major killer of infants—and one of the top causes of death in 1850—improving children’s survival odds and lengthening lifespans. By 1927, the year when the term “trick-or-treating” first appeared in print, there had been clear progress: U.S. life expectancy was 59 years for men and 62 years for women. The public was soon treated to some innovative new medical tricks: the following year, antibiotics were discovered, and the ensuing decades saw the introduction of several new vaccines.

In 2021, U.S. life expectancy was 79.1 years for women and 73 years for men. That’s slightly down from recent years but still decades longer than life expectancy for the aforementioned medieval kings who ruled during Halloween’s origins. Life expectancy has risen for all age groups, but especially for children, thanks to incremental progress in everything from infant care to better car-seat design.

So as you enjoy the spooky festivities this Halloween, take a moment to appreciate that today’s trick-or-treaters inhabit a world that is in many ways less frightening than when Halloween originated.

It’s the holiday season, and Christmas carols are everywhere, including the ubiquitous “Jingle Bells,” first published in 1857. Many take the refrain, “Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh!” at face value. But an underappreciated aspect of the lyrics is that they are actually rather cynical about sleigh rides. Part of the song goes:

The horse was lean and lank
Misfortune seemed his lot
He got into a drifted bank
And then we got upsot.

In the next verse, which is often skipped, the narrator relates being thrown out of the sleigh onto his back and getting laughed at by a romantic rival. His misfortune was relatively minor, but being thrown from a sleigh or carriage was not always a laughing matter.

During the time of horse-drawn vehicles, accidents frequently caused not only delays and inconveniences but also injuries and deaths. The British historian Paul Hair called the horse “one of man’s most dangerous tools,” arguing that “it is likely that per unit of travel the horse was more dangerous than the motor vehicle.”

He quotes Britain’s registrar general as noting in 1865 that “street accidents by horse carriages kill more people in a year than railways” and estimates a horse-related mortality rate of around 55 deaths annually per million people in 1874. In 2020, there were 1,516 road deaths in the United Kingdom. Divided by the current U.K. population of 67.2 million, that translates into a mortality rate from motor vehicle accidents of about 23 deaths annually per million people, making modern car rides more than twice as safe as Victorian horse carriage rides. And car deaths are becoming more rare almost everywhere.

One problem with relying on unruly, skittish horses for transportation was that the animals sometimes bolted or reared unexpectedly. A slightly faulty harness could also spell disaster. Even dismounting a horse or carriage was dangerous; horse kicks have an average force of 2,000 pounds per square inch and an average speed of 200 miles per hour. One famous study found that, in the 19 years between 1875 and 1894, at least 280 highly trained Prussian cavalrymen died from horse kicks.

No amount of wealth or power could shield someone from the inherent danger of a horseback or carriage ride. Servants and nobility alike succumbed to carriage accident injuries.  

The crown prince of France’s July Monarchy, Ferdinand Philippe d’Orléans, died of a skull fracture from a horse carriage accident at the young age of 31 in 1842. In the United States, the French-born governor of Louisiana, Pierre Derbigny, died in office in 1829 when he was thrown from a moving horse-drawn carriage. A grandson of Thomas Jefferson died in a horse carriage accident in 1875. Future first lady Frances Cleveland’s father died in a horse carriage accident that same year.  

A monument in New York City commemorates a debutante named Charlotte Canda, who was killed in a horse carriage accident in 1845. On her way back from her 17th birthday party, the horse bolted, and Charlotte was thrown out of the moving carriage.

In Australia, the English novelist Charles Dickens’ daughter-in-law died in a similar accident in 1878. The ponies became spooked and ran wild, flinging her out of the carriage and causing a fatal head injury. She was just 29 years old and left behind two children who survived the accident, but were no doubt traumatized by witnessing their mother’s death. In Germany, in 1900, Prince Albert of Saxony died at age 25 when an open carriage collided with his own, overturning it into a ditch.

Old newspapers reveal many episodes of startled horses running amok, wrecking the vehicles they were pulling and injuring riders. The horses themselves were often casualties. In fact, Victorian streetcar horses had an average life expectancy of barely two years.

If we look beyond horse-drawn carriage accidents to other equine-related injuries, the list of victims includes several kings. William of Orange, for example, died from illness exacerbated by a broken collarbone sustained when his horse tripped on a molehill in 1702. After having the bone set, he took a bumpy 12-mile carriage ride that jolted the bone out of place and necessitated re-setting it. That carriage ride must have been horrifically painful.

So rather than romanticizing horse-drawn transportation, the next time you hear the line, “Oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh!” remember that the lyric is somewhat sarcastic—and with good reason. And as you travel to see loved ones for the holidays, take a moment to appreciate the technological advances in transportation safety.

This article was originally published in Reason.

Have pickups become more affordable in the last 50 years? We can start by comparing a pickup built in 1970 to one built today, even though the two are almost as different as a Yugo and a Lexus.

According to the National Auto Dealers Association’s NADAguide, a basic Ford pickup sold for $2,599 in 1970. That year, a U.S. blue-collar worker’s compensation rate (incl. wages and benefits) was $3.93 per hour. Therefore, it took a blue-collar worker 661.3 hours of work to buy a pickup in 1970.

Today, a basic F150 costs $28,940, and a blue-collar worker’s compensation rate is $32.54 per hour. That indicates a time price of 889.4 hours of work – an increase of around 35 percent since 1970.

But Ford pickup trucks have become much higher quality over the last fifty years. A modern F150 gets 22 miles per gallon in the city and 30 miles per gallon on the highway. In 1970, a basic Ford pickup got 12 and 14, respectively. Modern pickups also have longer warranties (i.e., 36 months in 2021 versus 12 months in 1970) and are more reliable, powerful, comfortable, and safe than in 1970.

If we say that pickups today are twice as good as they were in 1970 (a conservative estimate), we should cut the time price of today’s F150 in half to account for the rise in quality. In other words, a pickup of 1970s quality would cost 444.7 hours of work today. That indicates that the time price decreased by 33 percent.

Another factor to consider is that most people don’t pay cash when they buy a new vehicle. Instead, they get a loan. So, the payment is more important than the price. The interest rate on a car loan was around 11.5 percent in 1970. Today, it is 4.25 percent.

A five-year loan translates to monthly payments of $57.16 for a 1970 pickup and $536.25 for the F150. Those numbers are equivalent to monthly payment rates of 14.54 hours of work in 1970 and 16.48 hours of work in 2021 – an increase of 13 percent.

However, if we consider the 2021 model to be 100 percent better than the 1970 model, the 2021 monthly payment falls to 8.24 hours of work (i.e., 43 percent less than the 1970 payment). Put differently, a customer gets 1.76 times more pickup for his or her money today than in 1970.

Another way to calculate pickup affordability is to look at modern cars that are equivalent to the 1970 Ford pickup in quality. India’s Mahindra, China’s Foton and JAC, and Japan’s Toyota still make pickups that are similar to the 1970 Ford model. Those pickups cost around $10,000. At the U.S. blue-collar worker compensation rate of $32.54 an hour, the time price of the above models equals 307 hours of work.

Comparing the 1970 Ford pickup to equivalent modern vehicles suggests that pickups have become 53 percent less expensive. For the time of work required to buy one pickup in 1970, a customer can get 2.12 today. Put differently, pickups have become 112 percent more abundant in the last 50 years.

Thanks to creative innovators, risk-taking entrepreneurs, and global competition, pickups have undergone significant improvements in the last 50 years. Those need to be taken into account when estimating pickup abundance.