Why do Americans die so young?

There is something wrong, and very serious, in the management of the health of Americans. Life expectancy is much shorter than that of European countries, even of the less fortunate areas of the Old Continent.

The Financial Times even dedicated an article to the problem, full of interesting data. We can start with the comparison between English-speaking states, therefore in theory more similar, i.e. the USA and the United Kingdom. However, the result is disheartening:

An American citizen has the life expectancy of the inhabitant of Blackpool, the UK city with the lowest life expectancy. Obviously the US state with the worst life expectancy, West Virginia, is placed in a much worse position than even the worst US city.

Could this difference be due to income? Let's analyze the comparative life expectancy between the two states according to income classes:

In general, there is a considerable gap, especially for lower expectations, between the US and the UK. Even with respect to the distribution of income, the differences are considerable and there is a difference of 5 years between British and American citizens, regardless of income.

The situation does not change, indeed it even worsens, comparing the USA with other advanced western countries.

On the left we see the comparison of the evolution of life expectancy between advanced countries and the USA with the effects of the covid, on the right purifying the effects of the covid. However, starting from 2019, there has been a real collapse for the US expectation towards the European ones which, having removed the covid effect, remains constant. It doesn't get better, but it stays the same.

There is an even more disturbing fact: what are the chances of a five-year-old boy dying before he reaches a certain age? We see it in the following graph:

In this case a five-year-old American child is vastly more likely, 4 times, to have died in his 40s than in comparable Western countries. However, this difference is not found among elderly citizens, over 70 years of age, in which life expectancy is in line with that of other countries.

We can see a tragic element: US youth are much more likely to die before reaching maturity and old age. The United States is not a country for young people, at least if they want to try to survive. The motivations? Let's try to make some assumptions:

• the excessive use of opioids and drugs, including their liberalisation. We have a direct effect for overdoses
• drugs, even legalized ones, still have an indirect effect on deaths, for example for driving under the influence of psychotropic substances;
• violent deaths, which are much higher in the US than in Europe and other Western countries, with some cities reaching South American levels;
• the lack of a real national health service which limits access to treatment for many workers.

Is the USA a paradise? No, at least they are only for those who survive…

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The article Why Do Americans Die So Young? comes from Economic Scenarios .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/perche-gli-americani-muoiono-cosi-giovani/ on Sat, 01 Apr 2023 08:00:45 +0000.