Why are Americans dying so young? 2023 Burn-Murdoch

Financial Times

US life expectancy is in freefall as the young and the poor bear the brunt of struggles for shared prosperity.

I’m not sure people on my side of the Atlantic fully appreciate quite how much better off the average American is than the average European. A car-wash manager in Alabama can now earn $125,000, about 50 per cent more than the head of cyber security at the UK Treasury even after accounting for different living costs. And this isn’t just another reflection of British stagnation — from the middle of the income distribution upwards, US households have streaked ahead of every country in the developed world over the past decade.

https://www.ft.com/content/653bbb26-8a22-4db3-b43d-c34a0b774303

Twitter thread:

 

Isn’t life expectancy also falling in the UK?

 

From the article:

And this is a very American problem. These young deaths are caused overwhelmingly by external causes — overdoses, gun violence, dangerous driving and such — which are deeply embedded social problems involving groups with opposing interests. Far trickier to tackle than most health issues where everyone is pulling in one direction.

Almost every country in the world took a mortality hit during the pandemic. Developed nations for the most part are bouncing back, but the US is not. If Covid-19 had never happened, life expectancy in other developed countries would have remained flat or increased, but the US would still have lost a year due to the surge in violent deaths. By my calculations, Americans lost 9.4 million years of life to external causes in 2021 alone, more than the 9.1mn lost to Covid over the course of the entire pandemic. And these deaths continue to rise.

 

Latest figures are to 2020 - basically show figures at standstill National life tables – life expectancy in the UK: 2018 to 2020.

The horror about the US figures is not so much the reaching old age - it's the death rates for the under 40s. Although the massive inefficiencies of the US system do mean that overall - for a health spend of more than twice per capita the US achieves only a comparable life expectancy at older ages as does the UK. The UK and US exist as the two extremes of bi-polar health service failure - the UK outcomes are worse than they need be due to chronic underfunding, while the US has even worse figures despite profligacy.

 

The really horrifying thing in America is that gun violence is the major cause of childhood fatalities.

 

It is horrifying when parents are afraid that their child might not return from school from all the school shootings.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/28/1166...a-shooting-on-school-grounds-almost-every-day

 

Don't many Americans work incredibly long hours? I thought 50/60/70 hours per week was common. If they struggle to cook due to lack of time then they must be eating lots of processed food which probably isn't full of the healthiest ingredients.

Another point...

High infant mortality and maternal mortality must be bringing the numbers down.

 

Motor vehicles still somewhat more dangerous than guns - but not by much, although suicide rather than violence from another accounts for 3rd of under 19 gun deaths:


The Major Causes of Death in Children and Adolescents in the United States

 

Unfortunately, CDC statistics from 2020 show that more American children and adolescents (age 1-19) now die from firearms than any other causes.

https://www.kff.org/global-health-p...earm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761

 

A measure of how fast the problem is accelerating in just four years.

It is notable how the numbers (first table in the KFF paper) for six out of seven headers for the US greatly exceed the UK percentages (simple rule of thumb multiply or divide by 5 to compare UK/US or US/UK) - only on cancer deaths in under 19s does the US have better figures than the UK, supporting the article in the top of the thread, while the other US numbers greatly exceed those of the UK.

 

America has an epidemic of mass shootings. In the archives there has been 130 mass shootings in 2023.

 

This one got to me.


https://twitter.com/user/status/1641799722418556931

 

This is frightening. A man has been arrested after two Texas cheerleaders were shot, one critically, after one of them mistakenly got into the wrong car, according to police and the owner of the gym where they trained.


I have done this a few times, mistakenly opened the door and got into the wrong car while a friend waited for me outside the store.

 

Icing on the cake - her friends are having to fundraise to ensure the critically injured victim can have continued decent medical care. Without cash or insurance cover hospitals will do the minimum to get the patient to discharge, not provide the best available treatment.

 

I used to like reading the news online.

Lately the US news is a horror show and I don't know if or when it will be over.

Why people, except maybe from El Salvador, want to emigrate here is in question.