“ The Amish have had a life expectancy in the low 70s since colonial times, when the rest of us were dying at 40 or 50. Since then, Amish life expectancy has stayed the same, and English life expectancy has improved to the high 70s.”
What pushed life expectancy down was infant mortality, and communicable disease. Amish would have likely lived for longer than average simply because they didn’t live in cities.
There’s also the obvious problem of the methods of old statistics, did it include infant mortality and childbirth deaths?