”Average incomes have grown much faster than in western Europe or Japan. Also adjusted for purchasing power, they exceed $50,000 in Mississippi, America’s poorest state—higher than in France.”
The article casually dismisses the counterpoint that the US trades high income for a lower social safety net.
The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania. Even Vietnam and Cuba have significantly higher average life expectancy than that.
> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania.
That's a great bunch of cherries you picked there. If you are comparing Europe to the US, comparing France and Mississippi is disingenuous. Compare best-to-best or worst-to-worst [1][2]. The worst European countries are Azerbaijan (66.9), Moldova (70.2), Ukraine (71.2). The worst US states are W Virginia (74.8), Mississippi (74.9), Alabama (75.5). The best EU countries are Norway (83.2), Switzerland (83.1), Iceland (83.1). In the US, it's Hawaii (82.3), California (81.7), New York (81.4).
In short, the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU. The worst of US is fares much better than the worst of EU.
The article itself cherry-picked France and Mississippi to compare income levels, which is why I continued the example. The additional data points are interesting and valuable, though speaking of cherry picking, Azerbaijan somewhat dubiously qualifies as a European country (neither it nor Moldova are part of the EU or Schengen, for instance).
Anyway, the fact that the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU continues to help make my point, which is that high US income does not compensate for the poorer quality of life.
> The worst of US is fares much better than the worst of EU
None of those countries are in the EU.
The lowest EU countries are countries that have only just recently joined the EU (Romania 74.35, Lithuania 74.93 and Latvia 75.39), which are around the same as the lowest US states.
You are shooting yourself in the foot if you are comparing a US state to say, eh, Moldova. The countries you named are only European by geography. They are on par or worse than North Africa.
That being said, life expectancy is a very bad measure in my opinion. Americans consume a shit-ton of junk food.
You can compare the US to the EU (political entity vs political entity). If you're comparing to Azerbaijan you should also put Mexican states on the American side, being that it's also in the same continent.
This is wrong. Food is very much linked to culture. Many countries eat better than the US. Most countries in the world (except some in Africa in some situations) don't have problems feeding most of their society.
Except it isn't wrong. Indigenous food cultures know how to get their nutrition and built entire cuisines and cultures around that. Americans who live in concrete food deserts are forced to eat what's cheap and available, which is usually fast food.
Norway isn't in the EU, nor is Switzerland, nor is Iceland. It says quite a lot actually that the richest/highest life expectancy countries in Europe are not in the EU.
Life expectancy figures are misleading though. Many people take it to mean "this is how long an average elderly person is likely to live" but is an average of all ages at death meaning more young people dying brings down the number. As the article mentions, the primary cause for lower American life expectancy isn't that its old people are dying younger but rather the violence and drug epidemics causing more young people to die early.
Either way the point that America is very rich but we do a comparatively terrible job of ensuring our people have long, happy lives is still true. You can pretty much apply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_... to any phenomenon that kills lots of Americans, except cancer and Alzheimer's.
If we are so rich, why can't we provide for the kind of programs that would deal with so many early deaths? Money should be able to deal with the issues at the very bottom of Maslow's hierarchy.
I think America is very rich because it incentivizes people to work their asses off all the time. Or in euphemistic corporate jargon, American society optimizes the heck out of everything to appease Wall St every quarter. If they were to focus on long, happy lives, they would not be as rich in the first place.
Incentivize is such an interesting word in these conversations. This word has two sides. One side is the word you would use usually with children. You want to “incentivize” them to do their homework? Add a reward. In this case the incentive isn’t that you’re rewarded for hard work. It’s that if you fuck up, and Fuck yo real bad, you can end up homeless, in debt and Ina poverty hole so deep you might never climb out of.
It's more likely that the "value" of income in the US is overestimated in international comparisons. If one compares not only lifespan, but also other measures of human health and experience, the differences between US states and European countries makes a little more sense, see: Top 20 states and European countries with the highest Human Development Index: https://i.imgur.com/jcHhVk4.png
I don't see the substantive distinction in this context. If people are being murdered at higher rates in the U.S., this lends weight to the argument that America is doing something wrong, socially, compared to France.
Not saying it isn't, just that the conclusions people draw, like that is a result of Americans being fatter than the French and dying of heart attacks earlier isn't really the primary cause.
lower life expectancy in US in general can be attributed to a more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation. Another attribution is the larger amount of immigrants, which as a segment has lower income level and thus lower life expectancy
Actually if US immigrants were their own country they'd have the best life expectancy in the world. They're holding up our stats, not pulling them down.
> In fact, the researchers say, Americans’ life expectancy would steeply decline if it weren’t for immigrants and their children. Under that scenario, U.S. life expectancy in 2017 would have reverted to levels last seen in 2003 — 74.4 years for men and 79.5 years for women — more closely resembling the average lifespans of Tunisia and Ecuador.
> Actually if US immigrants were their own country they'd have the best life expectancy in the world. They're holding up our stats, not pulling them down.
Of course. The sick, the halt, and the lame never made the trip.
The kids who survive the trip through the Darien Gap will do fine.[1]
> can be attributed to more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation.
people in the US aren't driving because they can afford cars - they have to drive because they don't have any other viable options due to the way american cities are designed
There are walkable US cities, and one can move to NY, Chicago, Boston, Seattle or its outskirts. However, people choose to stay in the suburbs because they can afford it.
Yes. I live in the suburbs in the outskirts of a major city. I might consider more seriously the trade-offs of actually living in the city if I could justify the cost of living increase.
You might want to think that, but unfortunately foreign born Americans (immigrants) actually have significantly longer life expectancies than American born do.
Part of the reason for that is the much higher death rate in infants in the US, but it is still a very hard thing to explain away. I will also say as somebody who has lived in the US, US food is high calorie, but it is not better on any dimension, than what I can buy in any European street market. Possibly foreign born Americans stick with their original diets more.. who knows. But ops point about trading quality of life for meaningless economic statistics is spot on.
Isn't simply explained by the fact that immigration processes generally select for the fittest individuals? If you are not operating well it is going to be difficult to find the capacity to start the immigration process, and if you do make it that far you are likely to find out that the destination country doesn't want you.
The same kind of phenomenon is seen in college graduates who love longer than non-graduates. There is no reason to think that attaining a college degree somehow cures what ails you. Rather, those who are not in tip top health don't have the capacity to make it all the way to graduation.
It is even likely why we see those with more money living longer. While it is often thought they live longer because they are more able to care for themselves, at the same time if you are not in perfect health it is much harder to make money. The same capacity determines qualities like what kind of job you can focus your attention on, and even something as simple as a few extra unpaid sick days each year can greatly reduce your net wealth potential over time.
Not really. We also have to put this in the context of US life expectancy being significantly lower than comparable European countries. Britain for example has also had a very high immigration rate for a couple of centuries now, but no comparable difference is seen there.
In the US money (and as proxy college education) is a gateway to a lot of things that influence health outcome, notably access to health treatment. So Occam's razor would suggest that is the simplest explanation - Europe has national health programs that provide access to good quality medical treatment for all levels of society. The US simply doesn't. See the infant mortality statistics.
> We also have to put this in the context of US life expectancy being significantly lower than comparable European countries.
Yes, this is due to drug-related deaths. The US loses 277 per million, while the UK only loses 53 per million.
That is a problem, one usually attributed to how the US cares for sick individuals with a more lackadaisy attitude towards prescribing certain addictive drugs. So, again, those who are unwell are in a disadvantaged position.
> See the infant mortality statistics.
The US does has an exceptionally high infant mortality rate, but mostly due to the US counting pre-term births differently to other countries. Canada, with universal healthcare, also has a mortality rate of 6 per 1,000 when using the same methodology although only reports 4 per 1,000 when using its standard methodology.
More available produce year round. Cheaper imported food from around the world due to dollar's strength. More diverse cuisines in big cities, with a lot better Asian cuisines (sushi!) in general than France, due to large immigrations.
OK sort of like if I used the word distributed in a technical discussion to mean a lot of people in different countries are using our application.
on edit: just seems a weird word to use when that has a precise meaning for food, if they had said a richer selection of food I would understand. But as the discussion was about what makes Americans unhealthy with shorter lifespans, and the unhealthiness of Americans is often synonymous with being overweight, saying it's because Americans eat rich food just doesn't seem to make any sense if what they mean is Americans have a wide selection of food to choose from.
France has 10.3 percent of foreign-born population, the US has 13.6 percent. Even if we assume you didn't make up the "lower life expectancy" part, which by some comments seems like it is incorrect, the 3% difference in immigrants seems like a rounding error.
Maybe something like median expected total accumulated net worth at longest known human lifespan? You'd want something that isn't distorted by income tails and reflects loss due to shortened lifespan.
It's fuzzy though and gets dystopian really quickly.
Interesting question though. Someone's probably thought of this already and it's just not in wide use. Maybe something like annual income in dollars cut by average life expectancy?
> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9
Like 90% of these "gotchas" for southern states (including lifespan comparisons) end up decreasing or disappearing entirely when you condition on racial demographics. Not to say that invalidates the problem; just that comparing Mississippi to France doesn't make sense at all from a demographic standpoint.
I don't think this is the defense you think it is, that minorities could live in such conditions they skew the statistics of the population is not a rebuttal.
Many of these conditioning effects persist even when controlling for wealth. Evidently there are other factors at play. Perhaps dietary differences, differences in medical requirements, etc.
A few confounding factors. Cross-checking and citation left and an exercise to the reader:
Immigrants that get through the (metaphorical and literal) gauntlets to get into the US skew longevity via a Darwinian reading.
Staying to any traditional diet, working with what is in season, has health impacts.
Immigrants form communities out of necessity. Strong communities lead to longer lifespans and has a decrease on childhood deaths.
None of these confounding factors corrects for the race-as-class indicator. They simply have a mathematical effect of smearing the statistics.
There is a difference between wealth and class. Class implies wealth, not the other way around. Hence why many die in hospital, despite having wealth, due to their race implying class. This shorthand leads to many outcomes, including calibration of equipment problems that are masked by the race-implies-class effects.
Sometimes because if you add 'race' to the data then clusters appear that align with that extra data. Of course it doesn't mean that 'race' is a causal factor, it can be that it correlates with some other data that is not included such as poverty.
For many outcomes (including medical outcomes) the differences do not go away when conditioning on wealth/income, so if there's a separate "root" causal factor, we have not yet found it.
It's too bad we don't in the US break down Black population statistics into those who are descendants of slaves vs. more recent immigrants - the differences in life outcomes would probably be significant, even at the same income level.
Because evidently it's a significant factor in the problem under consideration. It doesn't "need" to be brought into it unless you actually want to solve the problem.
The article casually dismisses the counterpoint that the US trades high income for a lower social safety net.
The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania. Even Vietnam and Cuba have significantly higher average life expectancy than that.