U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Again in ‘Historic’ Setback

Citation needed. Does not pass a cursory glance. Meanwhile there are plenty of good stats identifying strong correlates on other factors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

https://statisticalatlas.com/United-States/Household-Types

Family unit decline is a symptom not the underlying cause, it's a small part of the matrix of issues, it's often invoked as a means of blaming something inherently unchangeable, undefinable and unregulateable as a diversion.

And everyone does talk about it, I hear about it 3 times a week and it's because it's a useful distraction and a wedge to force legislation of personal moral choice.

It's like saying all problems individuals are having are caused by the individual. Somehow society, culture, governance and macro economic forces have no effect.

If you think the breakdown of the family unit is the root cause, let me assure you, homeschool familes are facing the same issue in our current environment.

Of course if we want to embrace absurdist reductionism the REAL problem is the dysfunction of churches abandoning their societal role for political power in the 80s, family's DO break down and now we have no "generally apolitical" relational safety net outside of the workplace, so social dysfunction can promulgate with no positive feedback loop of increased social cohesion to stop it. We need religious, areligious and apolitical societies that will facilitate mingling of social classes and are focused on the social good.

From Pew Research (2010), the decline in marriage is offset by rise in new families:

The Resilience of Families. The decline of marriage has not knocked family life off its pedestal. Three-quarters of all adults (76%) say their family is the most important element of their life; 75% say they are “very satisfied” with their family life, and more than eight-in-ten say the family they live in now is as close as (45%) or closer than (40%) the family in which they grew up. However, on all of these questions, married adults give more positive responses than do unmarried adults.

The Definition of Family. By emphatic margins, the public does not see marriage as the only path to family formation. Fully 86% say a single parent and child constitute a family; nearly as many (80%) say an unmarried couple living together with a child is a family; and 63% say a gay or lesbian couple raising a child is a family. The presence of children clearly matters in these definitions. If a cohabiting couple has no children, a majority of the public says they are not a family. Marriage matters, too. If a childless couple is married, 88% consider them to be a family.

The Ties that Bind. In response to a question about whom they would assist with money or caregiving in a time of need, Americans express a greater sense of obligation toward relatives—including relatives by way of fractured marriages– than toward best friends. The ranking of relatives aligns in a predictable hierarchy. More survey respondents express an obligation to help out a parent (83% would feel very obligated) or grown child (77%) than say the same about a stepparent (55%) or a step or half sibling (43%). But when asked about one’s best friend, just 39% say they would feel a similar sense of obligation.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2010/11/18/the-dec...

I think it's 'an issue' but not the major issue, except where it's 'acute'. A lot of couples are not getting married these days, which is 'something' but not like a disaster but in extremely impoverished/violeng ghetto areas you see well over 50% of kids not having any meaningful relationship with their Fathers. Now that is a 'primary' issue but it's also tied to incarceration, violence etc..

Definitely ultra violence (related to universal gun access), lack of healthcare, excessive inequality in some areas, obesity etc. are big factors.

I'm not sure if the most recent post-COVID data is hugely helpful because America did 'not very well' on that one despite having vaccines available. I mean, that's a whole other level of sad. But give it 3 years to see where the data sits without the 'COVID' blip.

At a glance this reads close to "families with no father figure". You probably didn't mean the likes or to induce knee jerk reactions, but would replace "family unit decline" as being an issue of concern with "there's little to no social/gov provided safety net" for folks who need it.

Family as we know it is a historical oddity. Before the industrial revolution the social networks were much broader and involved whole communities, or much more extended families than what we consider normal now. We can introduce other social groups that help people in need and provide support and are not based primarily on family ties. This is orthogonal to “family units”, which is more of a conservative dog whistle. There are not fewer families now than there used to be, it’s just that a family is not necessarily the stereotypical married heterosexual couple with their 6 children.

Cuba, one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere has a longer life expectancy than the US because they have universal healthcare. They also have a higher divorce rate than the US.

Straight people should get their act together. Y’all are so stuck on an image of family that has only existed for two generations at most, and it causes you to be lonely and unable to form relationships of meaningful strength outside that image. I feel sorry for straight people.

The average american is just plain unhealthy. Terrible diet, little daily activity. It's in the stats, which people ignore. You just plain see it with your own eyes as well. It's a genuine problem, not a lifestyle choice.

I spent a month in Asia, when I was planning the trip I was a little worried about eating out all the time and my health and weight gain. I actually ended up losing weight despite eating every meal in a restaurant.

Everything was so much less sweet, less sugar in everything. Even cookies weren't that sweet

> I saw a lot of attempts for normalization of this in US media, ie Hollywood family/comedy movies painting it as something to be OK with, and not a disease that will slowly but surely ruin your life and kill you prematurely, all completely preventable.

The thing is, looking at OECD ranking I am sitting in country with much lower obesity then USA.

The obesity stigma here is much lower then in USA and was always lower. The stereotype of fat people was that they are friendly and easier to get along with.

Terrible diets lead to obesity and insulin resistance. Doctors do the blood glucose test and if the patient does not figure out eating and nutrition on their own, the Doctors often write prescription for insulin to supposedly control blood glucose. This has the obvious effect of accelerating insulin resistance, though the blood glucose numbers do look better for a while.

> That Americans are generally way more overweight than say Europeans

Indeed, and this is why it's difficult to discuss universal health care with European friends and coworkers.

It's one thing to subsidize basic humanity, some poor soul who got the wrong DNA sequence shattered at the wrong time by the wrong cosmic ray, or who tripped on a sidewalk and wrecked their pelvis. Absolutely laudable goal.

It's another thing entirely to subsidize the stars of My 600lb Life.

And inbefore the inevitable downvotes for being "heartless", I am a former fatass with an abiding hatred for my former self. Fat people largely bring their health problems on themselves. This is a fact. Source: me.

How are you defining worst? Genuinely asking, because as far as I know opioid contributes far more to the falling in life expectancy because it kills people from an early age. Even a fat person's body can keep going into their 50s and 60s.

These health insurances you get in the US are horrible because you can easily pay hundreds of dollars if you go to the doctor depending on your plan. There’s a minimum you need to spend from your own pocket before the insurance starts covering you. For this reason many (most?) people who are insured still do not visit their doctor.

> the number of Americans with health insurance is at a historic high, Biden bragged about it on Twitter last week

I have "good" insurance through my employer. Over the summer I had appendicitis. The cost of the surgery and hospital stay after insurance would have bankrupted my brother and put any of my cousins in substantive medical debt. It would have been nearly a fifth of my retired mother's net worth.

Having insurance is great because it makes lots of care attainable, but it's a vast overstatement to say that having it gives you access to basic care. A majority of Americans have less than $1000 in savings—that's not even an ambulance ride.

> advice

I was under the impression that doctors were getting sheepish about giving such advice in the US. Patients don't like to hear it.

And overweight patients require more and more expensive treatments over the course of their lives, creating a perverse incentive in a for-profit healthcare system.

As (I think) the comedian Jimmy Carr said - "Life is like a box of chocolates. Neither last long if you are obese."

Your link is the second in the article. This is the link the article provides in the second paragraph, the one they refer to as "the new report":

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsrr/vsrr023.pdf

The paragraph I quoted is drawing from the chart on page 5.

Traffic fatalities.

Just to clarify for other people who were confused, life expectancy increased until 2019 inclusive, then nosedived. So Covid (or higher-order effects of Covid and the response) must be responsible.

Hard to say. What we know for sure is that it 100% does NOT have ANYTHING to do with the safe and effective vaccines. I can’t believe people would even think that!

That's just restating the issue: you're just saying "premature death affects men more." The question is why. It's not some natural state of affairs but something created by social and political choices.

For COVID, for example, the risk ratio for men compared to women is larger than the risk ratio for e.g. black people compared to white people. But public health authorities in the US prioritized access to vaccines to racial minorities (who indeed had higher age-adjusted mortality rates than white people), while not doing the same for men. This is an ideological choice, driven by the idea that bad things that happen to men aren't worthy of social concern.

More broadly, the gendered death statistics are indicative of systemic inequalities.

This is likely related to COVID as well, just indirectly.

- Research has shown that recent COVID-19 infection increases risk of heart attacks, strokes, and a ton of other vascular diseases.

- Overwhelmed hospital systems will have poorer outcomes in emergencies such as sepsis where time-based care is a huge factor. Worldwide sepsis mortality has gone up over the last two years, for example.

I suspect a decent chunk of that is unreported/deliberately obfuscated covid deaths.

Everything you just said is true, but it could also be simultaneously true that most of the drop was due to covid. The two are related in fact- structuring your whole health care system to maximize profit no matter what the side effects might be makes it brittle in the face of a pandemic.

Basically I'm saying that my statement, and your statement, are not contradictory but rather two sides of the same coin.

Slight decline vs a nosedive during the pandemic.

I think people need to realize that health insurance has fuck all to do with holistic health care. Nobody is looking out for you most of the time. You need to be on top of your health.

We all got it and realized it's a cold?

>I feel like this is the biggest impediment to universal healthcare in the usa, When much of the developed world implemented it. ...and the cost of healthcare was low. I'm not sure what you mean. systemic health issues, like obesity, wouldn't be better off under universal health care because I would end up paying for the other 40%. Which is entirely ""preventable"" whatever that means in todays society where no one actually prevents it.

as to what you mean when you say "When most of the developed world implemented it" I'm not sure we have the same classification of 'universal health care'

For me, based in the Netherlands, I wouldn't classify our system as universal health care at all. There is a tax for health insurance but it doesn't cover anything that any america, brit or canadian would call universal health care. The government negotiates a minimum package that all insurers need to provide which sets you back 120 euro's a year. for lower income, the government will give a tax break up to 110 euro's a year. Companies are also paying for health care and only whats left after that is paid by the governement. However when you require certain healthcare services, you pay the first 385 euro's out of your own pocket. This is on a yearly basis and is never covered by anyone but yourself. anything above that is fully covered and paid for. though there are lots of exeptions. You wont have to pay consultants, vaccinations and other commons. You'll still get the receipt sent to your adress so there's quite alot of price transparency going around. I remember hospitals billing me for over 4000 euro's of various services and procedures all neatly organised but ofcourse this only set me back 385 euro's. Denmark and other neighbours have similar setups that look like universal health care but are far from it, compared to canada or britain. And I wouldn't change the dutch system ever because Its simply the best functioning healthcare system of the world.

>If suddenly tomorrow everyone switches off sugar/carbs, we would have immense food shortages If everyone would bike to work tomorrow everyone except the Netherlands would have a bike shortage.

Don't say all/any. Vice versa But really, Find me any state which recorded lower obesity than @previous-year

>Newfoundland's very popular liberal government implemented a sugar tax recently. Its great that you're optimistic about this policy and I'm always quite positive of the future but obesity is one I'm simply not seeing any signs of anything that would have a chance of improving any situation. Coca cola zero sugar is the prime example of the only solution that people would be willing to accept even though their drink still spikes blood sugar and the correct step is to never buy softdrinks again. a sugar tax is only going to weigh more on the impoverished.

It does have a "if we can't belligerently shout 'we're #1', what's even the point of living?" to it, doesn't it?

That's how I interpret his statements, at least. He goes into more detail in his book The Network State, but essentially says America is descending and the future will be the Anarchistic West vs Communist China. He advocates exiting most systems into a "cloud country" which would ultimately manifest in the real world (aggregate online over similar values, purchase physical land, etc)