Why Don’t Americans Live Longer?
The U.S. ranks #50 on the CIA’s World Factbook’s list of life expectancy by country.
If you live in the U.S. the World Bank says you’ll live to be 78.4 (on average), but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the average life expectancy for Americans is 77.9 years.
America’s still the richest and most powerful country in the world, so why don’t we live the longest?
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According to a new report, which contends that the rapid rise in childhood obesity, if left unchecked, could shorten life spans by as much as five years.
The report, (published in The New England Journal of Medicine”, says that:
That’s right and the report goes on to say that the average life expectancy of today’s adults, roughly 77 years, is at least four to nine months shorter than it would be if there were no obesity.
That means that obesity is already shortening average life spans by a greater rate than accidents, homicides and suicides combined, the authors say.
And they say that because of obesity, the children of today could wind up living two to five years less than they otherwise would, a negative effect on life span that could be greater than that caused by cancer or coronary heart disease.
It seems likely the reasons are behavioral e.g. smoking, obesity and stress.
Or public health related e.g., clean drinking water, sanitation and pollution.
While the U.S. health care system is far from perfect, it is most likely comparable or slightly superior to the medical care received in other developed countries.
Your suggestion that lack of clean drinking water and sanitation are factors made me laugh out loud.
It’s been about three quarters of a century since we could pin deaths on dirty water in this country.
Clean drinking water and sanitation might be an issue if lots of people were dying of bacterial illness.
The one place you’re most likely to get a fatal infection in this country is in a hospital or nursing facility.
What about infant mortality rates (U.S. is #37 I think).
Is this behavioral or environmental, too?
What about deaths from treatable deceases (U.S. is #19 out of 19 surveyed countries)?
The infant mortality rates in the U.S. are actually a simple function of the fact that in the U.S., the rate fo survival for prematurely born infants is so much higher and also that we count stillbirths on our statistics which most countries do not.
I don’t know but 77.9 is such a high percentage if you gonna ask me. But Chinese and Japanese outlive all of us I guess.
I’ve lived in both Japan and the US for over 20 years each. The quality of health care in Japan is FAR superior to that in the US for a number of reasons:
- Personal Health education is far more intensive and comprehensive
- Costs are reasonable due to national health care so virtually no one delays treatment – this prevents expansion
- Pre-natal care is the best in the world – the amount of preparation for childbirth dwarfs that of the US
- A tendency to be concerned for others means more people wear masks when ill to prevent spreading their illness.