decline in U.S. life expectancy
This brings up two points often discussed on this blog. When people point out the top 10 “happiest” and healthiest countries in the world are Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, Austria etc. - most all social democracies and all with universal health-care some say it’s because they’re small and white. Well here we have a large portion of whites dying earlier in America - and many because their health-care stinks. Just saying “my private health-care is great” doesn’t mean anything statistically. Statistically US health- care ranks well below America’s in many statistics and America spends about 50-60% more per person.
So poor American white’s life expectancy is declining rapidly while poor black and Hispanic’s life expectancy is rising. So much for the exceptionalism of being white and of the US health-care system. But I’m sure Romney cares a lot about these people.
Life expectancy is shrinking for some Americans NewYorkTimes 9/20/12
For generations of Americans, it was a given that children would live longer than their parents. But there is mounting evidence that this trend has reversed itself for the country’s least-educated whites…
….The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.
The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008…..life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.
White men lacking a high school diploma lost three years of life. Life expectancy for both blacks and Hispanics of the same education level rose, the data showed.
“We’re used to looking at groups and complaining that their mortality rates haven’t improved fast enough, but to actually go backward is deeply troubling,”
The five-year decline for white women rivals the seven-year drop for Russian men in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union…
…The latest estimate shows life expectancy for white women without a high school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger: 67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those with a college degree or better.
“There’s this enormous issue of why,”
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