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I think that is systematically untrue. Poverty is correlated with a shorter lifespan. More graphs in the second link... https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/11/ge

by dv_dt 9y ago

I think that is systematically untrue. Poverty is correlated with a shorter lifespan. More graphs in the second link... https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/11/geography-income-play-roles-in-life-expectancy-new-stanford-research-shows/ https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/11/geography-income-play-r... "Being richer was associated with living longer at every level of the income distribution. And the gap between the richest 1 percent and the bottom 1 percent in the nation was vast. At 40, the richest men could expect to live to 87 while the bottom 1 percent had a life expectancy of just above 72 – equal to the average in a developing country like Sudan" https://healthinequality.org/documents/paper/healthineq_summary.pdf https://healthinequality.org/documents/paper/healthineq_summ...

Domenic_S 9y ago
That's a deeply reductionist way of looking at it. > At the same time, the researchers are quick to point out that the findings cannot immediately be reduced to simple cause-and-effect explanations. For instance, as social scientists have long observed, it is very hard to say whether having wealth leads to better health — or if health, on aggregate, is a prerequisite for accumulating wealth. Most likely, the two interact in complex ways, something the study cannot resolve. - https://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-us-0411 https://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap... In other words, this is a chicken-and-egg problem.
- deleted 9y ago
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- dv_dt 9y ago
  If you parse that question carefully, it is not asking if existing wealth can help confer health. The question is if health is needed to accumulate (more) wealth. Word in () added. And that seems like a silly question - of course people are going to have more difficulty accumulating wealth with sufficiently bad health.. I think there is a definite policy question of how exactly is it that wealth helps grant better health, and can we effectively increase our society's health by knowing in more detail... but to me the fundamental link doesn't have much more to prove with that data.

by dv_dt 9y ago

Domenic_S 9y ago

That's a deeply reductionist way of looking at it. > At the same time, the researchers are quick to point out that the findings cannot immediately be reduced to simple cause-and-effect explanations. For instance, as social scientists have long observed, it is very hard to say whether having wealth leads to better health — or if health, on aggregate, is a prerequisite for accumulating wealth. Most likely, the two interact in complex ways, something the study cannot resolve. - https://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap-us-0411 https://news.mit.edu/2016/study-rich-poor-huge-mortality-gap... In other words, this is a chicken-and-egg problem.

deleted 9y ago
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dv_dt 9y ago
If you parse that question carefully, it is not asking if existing wealth can help confer health. The question is if health is needed to accumulate (more) wealth. Word in () added. And that seems like a silly question - of course people are going to have more difficulty accumulating wealth with sufficiently bad health.. I think there is a definite policy question of how exactly is it that wealth helps grant better health, and can we effectively increase our society's health by knowing in more detail... but to me the fundamental link doesn't have much more to prove with that data.