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.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
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.
That being said, life expectancy is a very bad measure in my opinion. Americans consume a shit-ton of junk food.
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.
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.
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.
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
yeah, the U.S eats richer food than the French.
American butter and cream is ludicrously bad. There is just enough taste to it to make the stuff inedible.
Sushi is not a rich food.
Sauces with a lot of butter and fats in them are 'rich', pastries can be rich, depending mainly on the fattiness of the cream and butter.
on edit: French cuisine is generally thought of as one of the richest in the world, hence my use of them as an example.
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.
American sushi is full of sugar and most of the specialty rolls are soaked in even more sugar and five different varieties of flavored mayonnaise.
By what standard exactly is pathological caloric surplus funded by big food considered “richer”?
> 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.
(data is pre-covid)
https://gero.usc.edu/2021/09/30/immigration-boosts-u-s-life-...
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]
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/13/americas/darien-gap-us-panama...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
It's fuzzy though and gets dystopian really quickly.
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.
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.