Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said its findings were persuasive.
In our society uneducated correlates with poverty and poverty is generally accompanied with poor nutrition and addiction to harmful drugs primarily alcohol, tobacco and, more recently, meth. These combined with poor access to effective health care, are not associated with long lives. The change has been the increased poverty resulting from loss of low demand industrial jobs. Previous to our outsourcing over the last 30 years an uneducated person could get some form of decent paying employment as a factory hand. Before the Equal Rights Act reduced racial discrimination most of these jobs when to whites. Since then the impoverished whites have joined the other impoverished minorities in suffering from reduced life spans as these jobs were no longer available to either black or white unschooled people.
The real problem is the linkage of income and health care with employment. We consider income disconnected from employment to be sinful except if the income is derived from assets. The poor unemployed are literally unfortunate as the fortunate are praised for living off their unearned income but the poor are condemned for living off welfare. As more and more factory jobs become scarce the economy and society are going to have to figure out how to provide purchasing power to the unemployed and unemployable masses if the high volume manufacturing is going to be able to have enough people still available to consume the output. Perhaps it will consider some form of universal ownership to replace universal welfare. Perhaps it will not and drown in its own unsalable output.
Like others have said, education and financial security tend to correlate highly with habits and behaviors that are generally thought to be healthy.
Thus, educated and/or financially secure people tend to exercise more, eat healthier food, make better life decisions, have fewer highly stressful life events, etc. I am sure that access to health care is also an important factor.
Some factors can even result in a compound effect: Thus, relative poverty can force you to live a less healthy life. It is much easier (and cost effective) to purchase a $1.49 can of Ragu and feed your entire family than it is to spend $10 on fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and basil... Being poor doesn't really allow for healthy food choices... People will rather buy a bag of potato chips that the entire family can consume than purchase an apple that only feeds one. You get more caloric bang for your buck with the former.
I would also think that the effect carries across different racial demographics.
Paging Charles Murray! Paging Charles Murray! Report to Fishtown ASAP!
He'll sort it out.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
