lagging U.S. lifespan

[alocispepraluger102]

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/11/ap4010790.html

what troubles aloc most about this article is facts and commentary mixed in a straight news article.

aloc wants just the facts, but that doesnt happen anymore.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Ain't nuffin' vere, Aloc. Zis one of dose orgs you need to subscribe to?

Please post text.

MG

[Guy Berger]

Ain't nuffin' vere, Aloc. Zis one of dose orgs you need to subscribe to?

Please post text.

MG

I'm not having problems, the article is definitely there.

Guy

[alocispepraluger102]

.S. Lags Behind 41 Nations in Life Span

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER 08.11.07, 2:53 PM ET

WASHINGTON -

Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.

For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.

Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.

"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.

Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Maucau, San Marino and Singapore.

The shortest life expectancies were clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, as well as famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years, followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.

Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.

But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."

Among the other factors:

_ Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."

_ Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.

Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.

_ A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.

Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.

"It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."

Another reason for the U.S. drop in the ranking is that the Census Bureau now tracks life expectancy for a lot more countries - 222 in 2004 - than it did in the 1980s. However, that does not explain why so many countries entered the rankings with longer life expectancies than the United States.

Murray, from the University of Washington, said improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy. But, he predicted, the U.S. won't move up in the world rankings as long as the health care debate is limited to insurance.

Policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, said Murray. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar.

"Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go along way toward improving health care in the United States," Murray said. "The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Thanks Aloc.

MG

[catesta]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

[BERIGAN]

_ A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.

Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.

"It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."

A few reasons why the Infant mortality rate is higher in the U.S.(Doesn't explain the higher rate of infant mortality for African-American babies)

Cuba vs. the United States on Infant Mortality

Recently released statistics on the infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere yielded an odd conclusions — Cuba’s infant mortality rate, 16 6.0 per 1,000, is now lower than the U.S. infant mortality rate, at 7.2 per 1,000. Given Cuba’s poverty level, its 6.0 rate is very impressive, but is it accurate to say that Cuba now has an infant mortality rate lower than the United States? No.

The problem is that international statistics on infant mortality are helpful in revealing large differences, but when it comes to small differences such as that between Cuba and the United States, often other factors are really behind the numbers.

The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category — the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old.

Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of

emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive

in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality — the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation.

How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive — and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent — that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.

In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.

This is clearly what is happening in Cuba. In the United States about 1.3 percent of all live births are very low birth weight — less than 1,500 grams. In Cuba, on the other hand, only about 0.4 percent of all births are less than 1,500 grams. This is despite the fact that the United States and Cuba have very similar low birth rates (births where the infant weighs less than 2500g). The United States actually has a much better low birth rate than Cuba if you control for multiple births — i.e. the growing number of multiple births in the United States due to technological interventions has resulted in a marked increase in the number of births under 2,500 g.

It is odd if both Cuba and the U.S. have similar birth weight distributions that the U.S. has more than 3 times the number of births under 1,500g, unless there is a marked discrepancy in the way that very low birth weight births are recorded. Cuba probably does much the same thing that many other countries do and does not register births under 1000g. In fact, this is precisely what the World Health Organization itself recommends that for official record keeping purposes, only live births of greater than 1,000g should be included.

The result is that the statistics make it appear as if Cuba’s infant mortality rate is significantly better than the United States’, but in fact what is really being measured in this difference is that the United States takes far more serious (and expensive) interventions among extremely low birth weight and extremely premature infants than Cuba (or much of the rest of the world for that matter) does.

This does not diminish in any way Cuba’s progress on infant mortality, which is one of the few long term improvements that the Cuban state has made, but infant mortality statistics that are that close to one another are often extremely difficult to compare cross-culturally.

http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/200...fant-mortality/

Edited August 13, 2007 by BERIGAN

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Very interesting Berigan. Thanks.

MG

[alocispepraluger102]

thanks berigan

[Guy Berger]

Very interesting Berigan. Thanks.

MG

Yup.

An enterprising public health statistician/economist would do us all a service by attempting to harmonize the international data.

Guy

[paul secor]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

Edited August 15, 2007 by paul secor

[Niko]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

it's cute they claim in the article this is because americans have the money to be as fat as they are - this may make the difference in comparison with many countries in the world but i guess for most countries which are "better" than the us on that list it's rather ridiculous to think that is part of the reason...

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

it's cute they claim in the article this is because americans have the money to be as fat as they are - this may make the difference in comparison with many countries in the world but i guess for most countries which are "better" than the us on that list it's rather ridiculous to think that is part of the reason...

Well, I think that MAY have something to do with it, but not in the way they think.

One of the things that Americans are definitely OK with is being rich. "Making it" is the American dream. so conspicuous expenditure, on luxuries including lotsa grub, is not something that is looked down upon, as it is over here. Over here, being rich don't give you class.

So, someone moving to the US wouldn't get fat UNLESS they digested the American dream whole.

MG

[catesta]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

it's cute they claim in the article this is because americans have the money to be as fat as they are - this may make the difference in comparison with many countries in the world but i guess for most countries which are "better" than the us on that list it's rather ridiculous to think that is part of the reason...

I would agree you can't really associate wealth with being overweight.

Obesity is a very common thing in the poorer areas.

[catesta]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

it's cute they claim in the article this is because americans have the money to be as fat as they are - this may make the difference in comparison with many countries in the world but i guess for most countries which are "better" than the us on that list it's rather ridiculous to think that is part of the reason...

Well, I think that MAY have something to do with it, but not in the way they think.

One of the things that Americans are definitely OK with is being rich. "Making it" is the American dream. so conspicuous expenditure, on luxuries including lotsa grub, is not something that is looked down upon, as it is over here. Over here, being rich don't give you class.

So, someone moving to the US wouldn't get fat UNLESS they digested the American dream whole.

MG

MG, here it is no different. Being rich does not give a person class, it just means they have money.

And for the record my initial comment on this topic was a joke. Kind of like me saying, when I turn 75 I'll move somewhere else to pick up a few extra years.

Edited August 15, 2007 by catesta

[paul secor]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

it's cute they claim in the article this is because americans have the money to be as fat as they are - this may make the difference in comparison with many countries in the world but i guess for most countries which are "better" than the us on that list it's rather ridiculous to think that is part of the reason...

Well, I think that MAY have something to do with it, but not in the way they think.

One of the things that Americans are definitely OK with is being rich. "Making it" is the American dream. so conspicuous expenditure, on luxuries including lotsa grub, is not something that is looked down upon, as it is over here. Over here, being rich don't give you class.

So, someone moving to the US wouldn't get fat UNLESS they digested the American dream whole.

MG

MG, here it is no different. Being rich does not give a person class, it just means they have money.

And for the record my initial comment on this topic was a joke. Kind of like me saying, when I turn 75 I'll move somewhere else to pick up a few extra years.

Guess you've got to start adding sarcastic smileys so overserious types like me get it.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

it's cute they claim in the article this is because americans have the money to be as fat as they are - this may make the difference in comparison with many countries in the world but i guess for most countries which are "better" than the us on that list it's rather ridiculous to think that is part of the reason...

Well, I think that MAY have something to do with it, but not in the way they think.

One of the things that Americans are definitely OK with is being rich. "Making it" is the American dream. so conspicuous expenditure, on luxuries including lotsa grub, is not something that is looked down upon, as it is over here. Over here, being rich don't give you class.

So, someone moving to the US wouldn't get fat UNLESS they digested the American dream whole.

MG

MG, here it is no different. Being rich does not give a person class, it just means they have money.

And for the record my initial comment on this topic was a joke. Kind of like me saying, when I turn 75 I'll move somewhere else to pick up a few extra years.

Guess you've got to start adding sarcastic smileys so overserious types like me get it.

I did get it

And actually, your other post about obesity in poor areas is on the mark, too. A lot of this is about what you eat (see Dan's thread) rather than how much.

But what you eat isn't simply a question of whether you can afford to eat more healthily. It's also what tastes nice. And I've got to admit that the mayo in the soul food restaurants in Newark in which I've eaten is the best tasting stuff EVER! And I bet, if I lived over there, I'd kill myself on soul food!

MG

[catesta]

So, does this mean if a person moves to the U.S. from France or Japan he or she can expect to die sooner than they otherwise would have?

Given the bad dietary habits in the U.S. - go to a mall or to a street in a U.S. city and check out the number of obese people walking around - that might well be true.

it's cute they claim in the article this is because americans have the money to be as fat as they are - this may make the difference in comparison with many countries in the world but i guess for most countries which are "better" than the us on that list it's rather ridiculous to think that is part of the reason...

Well, I think that MAY have something to do with it, but not in the way they think.

One of the things that Americans are definitely OK with is being rich. "Making it" is the American dream. so conspicuous expenditure, on luxuries including lotsa grub, is not something that is looked down upon, as it is over here. Over here, being rich don't give you class.

So, someone moving to the US wouldn't get fat UNLESS they digested the American dream whole.

MG

MG, here it is no different. Being rich does not give a person class, it just means they have money.

And for the record my initial comment on this topic was a joke. Kind of like me saying, when I turn 75 I'll move somewhere else to pick up a few extra years.

Guess you've got to start adding sarcastic smileys so overserious types like me get it.

I did get it

And actually, your other post about obesity in poor areas is on the mark, too. A lot of this is about what you eat (see Dan's thread) rather than how much.

But what you eat isn't simply a question of whether you can afford to eat more healthily. It's also what tastes nice. And I've got to admit that the mayo in the soul food restaurants in Newark in which I've eaten is the best tasting stuff EVER! And I bet, if I lived over there, I'd kill myself on soul food!

MG

Yep.

[Guy Berger]

I would agree you can't really associate wealth with being overweight.

Obesity is a very common thing in the poorer areas.

In fact, my understanding is that obesity in the US is very much associated with poverty. (Poverty supposedly has similar associations with other unhealthy habits -- cigarette smoking, etc.)

Guy