Life Expectancy in the U.S. Continues to Drop; White Americans See Larger Decrease Than Black and Hispanic Americans

[bluesclues5]

Originally Posted by Loveshiscountry

Falling behind where? In education? No doubt. Government is in charge of that and you want them to be in charge of healthcare? They are the reason costs have risen and quality went down.

Competition drives down prices and improves quality. Price controls hurt quality and and subsidies raise prices. Why are healthcare costs rising when technology reduces the cost in other fields?

Because our govt is only interested in enriching themselves and their ilk.

[bluesclues5]

Originally Posted by mco65

I doubt gun violence has much of an effect on our life expectancy.. this is a reach. You can claim we have a violent gun problem, but its simply not enough to impact the overall life expectancy in our country...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...of-death-youth
Guns are leading causes of deaths among the youth.
That's gotta bring the average down by quite a bit.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by bluesclues5

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...of-death-youth
Guns are leading causes of deaths among the youth.
That's gotta bring the average down by quite a bit.

But murders are way below where they were 30 years ago, even if they have turned up some in the last few years.

[Brave New World]

Originally Posted by Loveshiscountry

We have been trained to use life expectancy vs maximum human lifespan.

"But the inclusion of infant mortality rates in calculating life expectancy creates the mistaken impression that earlier generations died at a young age; Americans were not dying en masse at the age of 46 in 1907. The fact is that the maximum human lifespan — a concept often confused with "life expectancy" — has remained more or less the same for thousands of years. The idea that our ancestors routinely died young (say, at age 40) has no basis in scientific fact."

"If a couple has two children and one of them dies in childbirth while the other lives to be 90, stating that on average the couple's children lived to be 45 is statistically accurate but meaningless."

https://www.livescience.com/10569-hu...000-years.html


"As researchers Judith Rowbotham, now at the University of Plymouth, and Paul Clayton, of Oxford Brookes University, write, “once the dangerous childhood years were passed… life expectancy in the mid-Victorian period was not markedly different from what it is today”. A five-year-old girl would live to 73; a boy, to 75."

"Looking at dental wear on the skeletons of Anglo-Saxons buried about 1,500 years ago, they found that of 174 skeletons, the majority belonged to people who were under 65 – but there also were 16 people who died between 65 and 74 years old and nine who reached at least 75 years of age."

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...rsus-longevity

During the industrial revolution poverty and disease meant the average life span in England in 1841 for newborn boy was expected to live to 40.2. whereas a baby girl was expected to live to 42.2.

This is according to official records, although the average age was even lower in some industrial cities such as Liverpool where the average male had a life expectancy of 27 years at this time.

However improvements in nutrition, hygiene, housing, sanitation, control of infectious diseases and other public health measures have reduced mortality rates, increasing life expectancy to 56 years for males and 59 years for females by 1920.

By 2019, life expectancy at birth in England had increased to 79.9 years for males and 83.6 years for females.

In terms of Covid it might have some impact, however this may be just short term rather than a long term feature in terms of life expectancy in most countries.

How has life expectancy changed over time? - Office for National Statistics (ONS)

Life expectancy has changed significantly through time, as the tables in these links show.

Life expectancy - Wikipedia

What is happening to life expectancy in England? - Kings Fund