US Life Expectancy May Have Peaked

Hugh Pickens writes "Live Science reports that although life expectancy in the United States has risen to an all-time high of 77.9 years in 2007 up from 77.7 in 2006, gains in life expectancy may be pretty much over, as some groups — particularly people in rural locations are already stagnating or slipping in contrast to all other industrialized nations. Hardest hit are regions in the Deep South, along the Mississippi River, in Appalachia and also the southern part of the Midwest reaching into Texas. The culprits — largely preventable with better diet and access to medical services — are diabetes, cancers and heart disease caused by smoking, high blood pressure and obesity. What the new analysis reveals is the reality of two Americas, one on par with most of Europe and parts of Asia, and another no different than a third-world nation with the United States placing 41st on the 2008 CIA World Factbook list, behind Bosnia but still edging out Albania. 'Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing through 1999 those who were already disadvantaged did not benefit from the gains in life expectancy experienced by the advantaged, and some became even worse off,' says a report published in PLoS Medicine by a team led by Harvard's Majid Ezzati, adding that 'study results are troubling because an oft-stated aim of the US health system is the improvement of the health of "all people, and especially those at greater risk of health disparities.'"

Comments

Re:Slashkos

[phantomfive]

Because it's going to come up, I want to mention that the biggest criticism of the US health care system is often that the US has lower life expectancies (thus trying to imply that the US health care system is not as good). This is a non-sequitur, if you really dig into the numbers, you will find that the main reason for lowered life expectancies is obesity. Here is a report. Check the graphs, only Greece rivals the US in plumpness.

Another common criticism is that the US has high infant mortality rates. This is likely because of premature babies, which aren't always counted in infant mortality rates in other countries. If you are planning on having a baby prematurely, the US is a good place to do it (but please don't plan on that).

There are a lot of problems with the US health care system, for example, it is hard to get insurance if you have a pre-existing condition, the cost of malpractice lawsuits (and other things) drives up costs, not everybody has insurance (although we end up paying for them anyway when they go to the emergency room: no one can be turned away without treatment, which is good), but shouldn't we try to solve the real problems that are in the system, instead of trying to rewrite the whole thing from scratch? There are relatively simple solutions to all these problems, and as any programmer knows, drastically changing the structure of your program is only going to introduce more problems.

USA vs Europe

[homer_s]

Here is a comparison of life expectancies between the US and Europe.

For unadjusted life expectancy, the U.S. ranks #14 out of 16 countries, but for the adjusted standardized life expectancy, (adjusted for the effects of premature death resulting from non-health-related fatal injuries) the U.S. ranks #1.

drudge-dot?

[damn_registrars]

Oh stop already with the politics

Yeah, you'll show em when you get political on the matter!

"Stupid people do stupid things that cause them to die sooner." Not that there aren't stupid people everywhere, but in America we still have the right to be wrong to a much greater extent than the nanny states in Europe.

So then are you saying that anyone who makes less money than you is inherently stupid in comparison to you?

Enough with this continual blather about the 'disadvantaged/poor/etc.' if you nitwits aren't going to deal with the actual problem.

Then kindly enlighten us 'nitwits', if you could.

To a very high degree of correlation, the 'poor' aren't living in poverty because of a lack of money.

Really? I don't know where you live, but I haven't heard of many people who are born into families with money and then end up broke.

They lack money because they have make poor lifestyle decisions that RESULT in a lack of money.

Which is ignoring the fact that some good decisions require money...

Things like failure to get an education

That is an excellent example of one. If you are in a poor family, you might not even have access to enough credit for student loans.

Though even more so, if we want to talk about health care (which most reasonable people would agree has at least some correlation to life expectancy), we should note the relationship between health care and education:

If you want a higher education:

• You need insurance
• Which requires a job
• Which requires time
• Which impedes on study time

Hence many people of lower income status are stuck in failure spirals. While providing them with health care may not be enough to get them out, it should at least be able to help some people, both from that classification and others.

Normally I wouldn't flame so hard but this entire article so reeks of slashkos politics I just couldn't hold back. Enough with the thinly disguised political stories outside the politics topic. Raise your hand if you actually think this was 'news for nerds' and not the DNC talking points being put into action.

Were you not reading yesterday when a conservative opinion got made the slashdot front page and lead to a conservative orgy in the discussion?

But don't worry, there may be some conservatives running around with left-over mod points who will mod your post up to +5 just as they did with several from other conservative authors yesterday.

I thought that was what the current argument was about, whether we were going to HAVE a single "US health system" or not

Perhaps you haven't been reading the news? Congress gave up on single payer health care at least a full month ago. It won't happen in this congressional session, period. Really the discussion now is just on how much the democrats will fold on any sort of change whatsoever; will they fold like a nice origami piece (perhaps a swan or a dove would be nice), or completely down like a lawn chair (to be stuffed away for the indefinite future in someone's garage)?

Re:Wait, really?

[cayenne8]

"Note that the places where expectancy is low in the US is where there's the least chance of those poor folks having insurance? How is it a suprise that without health care you don't live as long?"

It isn't JUST a health care availability issue. In the US, it is largely a cultural thing too, IMHO. According to the article, it notes it is lower in the southern US. I live in New Orleans, and I can attest to how it is different down here. Food, drink and fun are such an integral part of life down here. We like our food fried, butter is your friend, etc. And down in the south, drinking is much more a part of life. I never saw people get so hot under the collar when you mentioned you got a little bombed the other night and had to be careful driving home....until I started talking to people from up north. Down here, not as much a stigma.

Heck, we still have drive through daiquiri shops down here, and bars give you a 'to go' cup to take your drink with you when you leave.

We still smoke a lot too in the south...especially in NOLA.

But, back to the food. Southern food is really good. Many of us down here "live to eat" rather than "eat to live". Obesity is huge down here. I've been changing my life around, cutting back on booze, and trying to eat better and exercise regularly, and it is still hard. You know they old saying "never trust a skinny chef"? Well, damned near everyone down here I know is at the least a great home chef...we love to cook and eat. Families still get together over food quite a bit down here...nothing like a big crawfish boil to get a group of friends to hang out, be good company and have some drinks.

Sure, we do have a large number of poor in the area...but, medicaid covers most of the truly poor, poor, poor people. The people in the projects are covered...I've seen that in practice.

And also, especially in this area...(from here to Houston really IMHO), it is known as Cancer Alley . I know the wiki says it is anecdotal, but, I've seen studies and reports on the news from the past telling that it is prevelant down here due to the large number of oil/chemical processing down here. We also are exposed to everything in the MS river, that comes from the rest of the country.

But you know...I've come to the conclusion, that there is Quality of life, vs Quantity of life. You have to strike a balance. I'd hate to life a boring, bland life that was long, than one that was a bit shorter but full of adventure, food, fun and friends. So far...I've been blessed with the latter.

I personally love living in the south, and especially New Orleans. The people are so much nicer, and you still see people being polite to each other. Quality of life vs Quantity of life.

Re:Slashkos

[Rising Ape]

And the relevance of that is? The most amazing care in the world is of no consequence if you can't afford it. I can't see how a system optimized for the super-rich can be considered the best for a society as a whole. A better measure would be where someone on an average income would be best served, or someone with no income.

Re:Slashkos

[radtea]

But every shill is an idiot, so the "but I repeat myself" follows. I was paraphrasing the famous American humourist, Mark Twain, who once said, "Are you a member of Congress? Are you an idiot? But I repeat myself..."

The best comparator for the US with regard to life expectancy is Canada, because while we have many similarities, we (Canadians) live several years longer than you (Americans.)

The two biggest differences between the countries are that our income distribution is significantly flatter than yours, and our health care system is universal and paid for via taxation (there is a nominal fee structure in some provinces, but it is equivalent to taxation.)

There are other differences: we have greater ethnic diversity than you--our Native American population alone is 4%. One in three Canadians is an immigrant. We have to deal with two official languages as well as a number of important minority languages: Hindi on the West Coast, Cree on the prairies, etc. We have a much more thinly spread population, so delivery of care and having enough people in one place to pay for big-ticket items is quite a bit harder for us than for you, with your larger, richer, denser population.

Those things are going to make it harder to deliver quality health care to Canadians, making our much longer lifespans quite remarkable. We also have a relatively large fraction of our male population working in mining, fishing, logging and farming, all of which kill people at much higher rates than other occupations (which is why they are done by men, because men dying has always been ok in all societies everywhere.)

How much of our longer lifespan is due to our flatter income distribution and how much is due to universal health care is not clear, but I think between them those are the major factors. Our flatter income distribution is achieved through more strongly progressive taxation at the top, and more robust income support at the bottom, which gives people at the bottom more latitude to make mistakes and learn from them productively, and gives people at the top less incentive to climb to the top by stepping on the faces of the oppressed masses.

Canadian society is also more democratic than American, with much hand-wringing over a recent federal election turnout that wasn't quite as low as the highest American turnouts in the past thirty years.

We are also politically and economically much more free than Americans, with far less implicit and explicit coercion regarding diversity of political opinions--as witnessed by our healthy minority and regional parties.

As a sometime small business-person who has friends doing similar work in the States I can say first hand that the burden of regulation/paperwork/bullshit on me is much smaller than in the US. You can incorporate here federally over the Web for $220 and the federal/provincial joint agreement in my province automatically handles provincial incorporation as well.

So those are some of the factors that MIGHT influence the difference, but you'd have to actually look in detail at the data and see:

a) who is dying
b) what are they dying from

to get a better sense of the actual causes. It's known as empiricism, and I highly recommend it.

Re:Slashrush

[ultranova]

Let's see: Just shy of 72 years ago, my grandfather arrived in this country with $32 and unable to speak the language. He lived in a ghetto style apartment with a brother who had come over to America from Europe 18 months earlier. He spent a week learning enough English to get a job in a machine shop for about $1 an hour.

In short, he was just about as low as you can go on the totem pole in America.

So basically you're saying that a monthly rent of an apartment back then was equivalent to 32 hours of lowest-paid work? Assuming, of course, that your grandfather ate rats in his ghetto-style apartment. Getting a job with no education (you didn't forgot that, did you ?) and unable to speak more than a few words is a nice bonus too.

40 years later, he died, living in a house he had built and paid for, on 40 acres of land overlooking a river. He had married and had a daughter (my mom). He left a small, but not unsubstantial amount of money behind.

SNIP

My parents weren't given anything.

Try to make up your mind.

Their parents literally had *NOTHING* on coming to America. Nothing was given to them either.

They were given a job on ridiculously low qualifications. They were also given almost-free housing.

It takes one good decision to break the cycle, but you would rather claim that no one can make that decision, and that the "privileged few" are somehow so enlightened and empowered that they should make decisions for the poor.

No, it takes a good opportunity to break the cycle. Such as, for example, your grandfather landing a job.

I agree that people shouldn't make decisions for the poor, but providing opportunities - such as free college education - is a good idea.

The moment I turn to you, pull out a gun and demand that *YOU* pay for the poor people because I feel bad about it (even though I won't spend my own money) then I have crossed the line, just as our government will if it does the same.

Perhaps. But unfortunately experience shows that if the poor are left to the nonexistent mercy of voluntary charity, the end result is them dying in the streets. This, then, gives me a choice: either I turn on you with a gun and demand that you pay for social security - along with me, of course - or I watch them die. Most people apparently prefer the former choice, and vote politicians who then do the forcible wealth distribution on their behalf.

You sir, are the problem.

No, people like you are. You tell the story of your grandfather making it - mostly by luck, it seems - and think that this means that anyone can if they just try hard enough. It's a stupid fantasy, and sadly common with libertarian crowd.

You, sir, perpetuate the system that condemns these people to the life they are stuck in. You say, "There but for the grace of God..." but do not dare look into the real problem, for fear you might somehow dirty yourself. You are like the people who sleep in a tent one night and claim to understand the Homeless. You point at the poor and say you care, but you do not understand the system that has made them that way.

Well, not being able to get a job with no education like your grandfather did most likely has something to do with it. Oh, sorry: one man made it 72 years ago, so obviously they just aren't trying hard enough.

While you decry the "system" that keeps people down, I argue that it is the very government you are clearly implying should step in, that created that system.

Which is a pretty good argument for having said government change said system, actually.