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”Average incomes have grown much faster than in western Europe or Japan. Also adjusted for purchasing power, they exceed $50,000 in Mississippi, America’s poore

”Average incomes have grown much faster than in western Europe or Japan. Also adjusted for purchasing power, they exceed $50,000 in Mississippi, America’s poorest state—higher than in France.” The article casually dismisses the counterpoint that the US trades high income for a lower social safety net. The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania. Even Vietnam and Cuba have significantly higher average life expectancy than that.

marianatom 3y ago
lower life expectancy in US in general can be attributed to a more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation. Another attribution is the larger amount of immigrants, which as a segment has lower income level and thus lower life expectancy
- b1ue64 3y ago
  > can be attributed to more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation. people in the US aren't driving because they can afford cars - they have to drive because they don't have any other viable options due to the way american cities are designed
  - marianatom 3y ago
    There are walkable US cities, and one can move to NY, Chicago, Boston, Seattle or its outskirts. However, people choose to stay in the suburbs because they can afford it.
    - tormeh 3y ago
      Isn't it the other way around? People have to stay in the suburbs because they can't afford to move to NYC?
      - DangitBobby 3y ago
        Yes. I live in the suburbs in the outskirts of a major city. I might consider more seriously the trade-offs of actually living in the city if I could justify the cost of living increase.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - HDThoreaun 3y ago
        not in chicago
    - bcrosby95 3y ago
      Chicago is the only close to affordable walkable city. As in, it's about the price of living in a suburb of LA. Which still isn't that affordable.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  >affordance for more food and richer food yeah, the U.S eats richer food than the French.
  - marianatom 3y ago
    More available produce year round. Cheaper imported food from around the world due to dollar's strength. More diverse cuisines in big cities, with a lot better Asian cuisines (sushi!) in general than France, due to large immigrations.
    - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
      The definition of richness in food is generally heavy in natural fats in proteins, high in butter and cream of a high quality. American butter and cream is ludicrously bad. There is just enough taste to it to make the stuff inedible. Sushi is not a rich food. Sauces with a lot of butter and fats in them are 'rich', pastries can be rich, depending mainly on the fattiness of the cream and butter. on edit: French cuisine is generally thought of as one of the richest in the world, hence my use of them as an example.
      - indecisive_user 3y ago
        In this case, the parent comment used "richness" as a synonym for being diverse and high quality.
        bryanrasmussen 3y ago
        OK sort of like if I used the word distributed in a technical discussion to mean a lot of people in different countries are using our application. on edit: just seems a weird word to use when that has a precise meaning for food, if they had said a richer selection of food I would understand. But as the discussion was about what makes Americans unhealthy with shorter lifespans, and the unhealthiness of Americans is often synonymous with being overweight, saying it's because Americans eat rich food just doesn't seem to make any sense if what they mean is Americans have a wide selection of food to choose from.
- camillomiller 3y ago
  “Richer” food? UberLOL! By what standard exactly is pathological caloric surplus funded by big food considered “richer”?
  - marianatom 3y ago
    technically a higher caloric diet is considered "richer" :)
- iudqnolq 3y ago
  Actually if US immigrants were their own country they'd have the best life expectancy in the world. They're holding up our stats, not pulling them down. > In fact, the researchers say, Americans’ life expectancy would steeply decline if it weren’t for immigrants and their children. Under that scenario, U.S. life expectancy in 2017 would have reverted to levels last seen in 2003 — 74.4 years for men and 79.5 years for women — more closely resembling the average lifespans of Tunisia and Ecuador. (data is pre-covid) https://gero.usc.edu/2021/09/30/immigration-boosts-u-s-life-expectancy-according-to-usc-princeton-study/ https://gero.usc.edu/2021/09/30/immigration-boosts-u-s-life-...
  - Animats 3y ago
    > Actually if US immigrants were their own country they'd have the best life expectancy in the world. They're holding up our stats, not pulling them down. Of course. The sick, the halt, and the lame never made the trip. The kids who survive the trip through the Darien Gap will do fine.[1] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/13/americas/darien-gap-us-panama-colombia-intl-latam/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/13/americas/darien-gap-us-panama...
- neffy 3y ago
  You might want to think that, but unfortunately foreign born Americans (immigrants) actually have significantly longer life expectancies than American born do. Part of the reason for that is the much higher death rate in infants in the US, but it is still a very hard thing to explain away. I will also say as somebody who has lived in the US, US food is high calorie, but it is not better on any dimension, than what I can buy in any European street market. Possibly foreign born Americans stick with their original diets more.. who knows. But ops point about trading quality of life for meaningless economic statistics is spot on.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Isn't simply explained by the fact that immigration processes generally select for the fittest individuals? If you are not operating well it is going to be difficult to find the capacity to start the immigration process, and if you do make it that far you are likely to find out that the destination country doesn't want you. The same kind of phenomenon is seen in college graduates who love longer than non-graduates. There is no reason to think that attaining a college degree somehow cures what ails you. Rather, those who are not in tip top health don't have the capacity to make it all the way to graduation. It is even likely why we see those with more money living longer. While it is often thought they live longer because they are more able to care for themselves, at the same time if you are not in perfect health it is much harder to make money. The same capacity determines qualities like what kind of job you can focus your attention on, and even something as simple as a few extra unpaid sick days each year can greatly reduce your net wealth potential over time.
    - neffy 3y ago
      Not really. We also have to put this in the context of US life expectancy being significantly lower than comparable European countries. Britain for example has also had a very high immigration rate for a couple of centuries now, but no comparable difference is seen there. In the US money (and as proxy college education) is a gateway to a lot of things that influence health outcome, notably access to health treatment. So Occam's razor would suggest that is the simplest explanation - Europe has national health programs that provide access to good quality medical treatment for all levels of society. The US simply doesn't. See the infant mortality statistics.
- tormeh 3y ago
  Most industrialized countries have abundant food and access to cars. That's not the issue.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    That's very different from choosing to live unhealthy lifestyles.
- twelve40 3y ago
  > the larger amount of immigrants France has 10.3 percent of foreign-born population, the US has 13.6 percent. Even if we assume you didn't make up the "lower life expectancy" part, which by some comments seems like it is incorrect, the 3% difference in immigrants seems like a rounding error.
boeingUH60 3y ago
Obesity might play a role...they're eating too much food!
seizethecheese 3y ago
Can you propose an adjusted income metric that takes social programs into account?
- swalling 3y ago
  The easier method to do a more nuanced analysis is to use data visualization where you put income on one axis and lifespan on another. https://www.gapminder.org/answers/how-does-income-relate-to-life-expectancy/ https://www.gapminder.org/answers/how-does-income-relate-to-... Interesting question though. Someone's probably thought of this already and it's just not in wide use. Maybe something like annual income in dollars cut by average life expectancy?
- derbOac 3y ago
  Maybe something like median expected total accumulated net worth at longest known human lifespan? You'd want something that isn't distorted by income tails and reflects loss due to shortened lifespan. It's fuzzy though and gets dystopian really quickly.
camillomiller 3y ago
[flagged]
wyager 3y ago
> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9 Like 90% of these "gotchas" for southern states (including lifespan comparisons) end up decreasing or disappearing entirely when you condition on racial demographics. Not to say that invalidates the problem; just that comparing Mississippi to France doesn't make sense at all from a demographic standpoint.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Why does race need to be brought into it?
  - WBrentWilliams 3y ago
    In the US, race is shorthand for class. In the US, class is not supposed to be noticed. Race is difficult (and insulting) to ignore. See also: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261303/being-black-living-in-the-red https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261303/being-black-livin...
    - wyager 3y ago
      Many of these conditioning effects persist even when controlling for wealth. Evidently there are other factors at play. Perhaps dietary differences, differences in medical requirements, etc.
      - WBrentWilliams 3y ago
        A few confounding factors. Cross-checking and citation left and an exercise to the reader: Immigrants that get through the (metaphorical and literal) gauntlets to get into the US skew longevity via a Darwinian reading. Staying to any traditional diet, working with what is in season, has health impacts. Immigrants form communities out of necessity. Strong communities lead to longer lifespans and has a decrease on childhood deaths. None of these confounding factors corrects for the race-as-class indicator. They simply have a mathematical effect of smearing the statistics. There is a difference between wealth and class. Class implies wealth, not the other way around. Hence why many die in hospital, despite having wealth, due to their race implying class. This shorthand leads to many outcomes, including calibration of equipment problems that are masked by the race-implies-class effects.
jhbadger 3y ago
Life expectancy figures are misleading though. Many people take it to mean "this is how long an average elderly person is likely to live" but is an average of all ages at death meaning more young people dying brings down the number. As the article mentions, the primary cause for lower American life expectancy isn't that its old people are dying younger but rather the violence and drug epidemics causing more young people to die early.
- swalling 3y ago
  Either way the point that America is very rich but we do a comparatively terrible job of ensuring our people have long, happy lives is still true. You can pretty much apply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_... to any phenomenon that kills lots of Americans, except cancer and Alzheimer's. If we are so rich, why can't we provide for the kind of programs that would deal with so many early deaths? Money should be able to deal with the issues at the very bottom of Maslow's hierarchy.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    I think America is very rich because it incentivizes people to work their asses off all the time. Or in euphemistic corporate jargon, American society optimizes the heck out of everything to appease Wall St every quarter. If they were to focus on long, happy lives, they would not be as rich in the first place.
    - Jcowell 3y ago
      > incentivizes Incentivize is such an interesting word in these conversations. This word has two sides. One side is the word you would use usually with children. You want to “incentivize” them to do their homework? Add a reward. In this case the incentive isn’t that you’re rewarded for hard work. It’s that if you fuck up, and Fuck yo real bad, you can end up homeless, in debt and Ina poverty hole so deep you might never climb out of.
    - 3y ago
RestlessMind 3y ago
> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania. That's a great bunch of cherries you picked there. If you are comparing Europe to the US, comparing France and Mississippi is disingenuous. Compare best-to-best or worst-to-worst [1][2]. The worst European countries are Azerbaijan (66.9), Moldova (70.2), Ukraine (71.2). The worst US states are W Virginia (74.8), Mississippi (74.9), Alabama (75.5). The best EU countries are Norway (83.2), Switzerland (83.1), Iceland (83.1). In the US, it's Hawaii (82.3), California (81.7), New York (81.4). In short, the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU. The worst of US is fares much better than the worst of EU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
- swalling 3y ago
  The article itself cherry-picked France and Mississippi to compare income levels, which is why I continued the example. The additional data points are interesting and valuable, though speaking of cherry picking, Azerbaijan somewhat dubiously qualifies as a European country (neither it nor Moldova are part of the EU or Schengen, for instance). Anyway, the fact that the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU continues to help make my point, which is that high US income does not compensate for the poorer quality of life.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - friend_and_foe 3y ago
    I think the only point in the statement you're referencing is "Americas poorest state is richer than one of the richest countries in Europe."
- csomar 3y ago
  You are shooting yourself in the foot if you are comparing a US state to say, eh, Moldova. The countries you named are only European by geography. They are on par or worse than North Africa. That being said, life expectancy is a very bad measure in my opinion. Americans consume a shit-ton of junk food.

marianatom 3y ago

lower life expectancy in US in general can be attributed to a more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation. Another attribution is the larger amount of immigrants, which as a segment has lower income level and thus lower life expectancy

b1ue64 3y ago
> can be attributed to more unhealthy diet and less walking, which is on the flip side due to US's economic success - affordance for more food and richer food, as well as affordance for car as transportation. people in the US aren't driving because they can afford cars - they have to drive because they don't have any other viable options due to the way american cities are designed
- marianatom 3y ago
  There are walkable US cities, and one can move to NY, Chicago, Boston, Seattle or its outskirts. However, people choose to stay in the suburbs because they can afford it.
  - tormeh 3y ago
    Isn't it the other way around? People have to stay in the suburbs because they can't afford to move to NYC?
    - DangitBobby 3y ago
      Yes. I live in the suburbs in the outskirts of a major city. I might consider more seriously the trade-offs of actually living in the city if I could justify the cost of living increase.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      not in chicago
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    Chicago is the only close to affordable walkable city. As in, it's about the price of living in a suburb of LA. Which still isn't that affordable.
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
>affordance for more food and richer food yeah, the U.S eats richer food than the French.
- marianatom 3y ago
  More available produce year round. Cheaper imported food from around the world due to dollar's strength. More diverse cuisines in big cities, with a lot better Asian cuisines (sushi!) in general than France, due to large immigrations.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    The definition of richness in food is generally heavy in natural fats in proteins, high in butter and cream of a high quality. American butter and cream is ludicrously bad. There is just enough taste to it to make the stuff inedible. Sushi is not a rich food. Sauces with a lot of butter and fats in them are 'rich', pastries can be rich, depending mainly on the fattiness of the cream and butter. on edit: French cuisine is generally thought of as one of the richest in the world, hence my use of them as an example.
    - indecisive_user 3y ago
      In this case, the parent comment used "richness" as a synonym for being diverse and high quality.
      - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
        OK sort of like if I used the word distributed in a technical discussion to mean a lot of people in different countries are using our application. on edit: just seems a weird word to use when that has a precise meaning for food, if they had said a richer selection of food I would understand. But as the discussion was about what makes Americans unhealthy with shorter lifespans, and the unhealthiness of Americans is often synonymous with being overweight, saying it's because Americans eat rich food just doesn't seem to make any sense if what they mean is Americans have a wide selection of food to choose from.
camillomiller 3y ago
“Richer” food? UberLOL! By what standard exactly is pathological caloric surplus funded by big food considered “richer”?
- marianatom 3y ago
  technically a higher caloric diet is considered "richer" :)
iudqnolq 3y ago
Actually if US immigrants were their own country they'd have the best life expectancy in the world. They're holding up our stats, not pulling them down. > In fact, the researchers say, Americans’ life expectancy would steeply decline if it weren’t for immigrants and their children. Under that scenario, U.S. life expectancy in 2017 would have reverted to levels last seen in 2003 — 74.4 years for men and 79.5 years for women — more closely resembling the average lifespans of Tunisia and Ecuador. (data is pre-covid) https://gero.usc.edu/2021/09/30/immigration-boosts-u-s-life-expectancy-according-to-usc-princeton-study/ https://gero.usc.edu/2021/09/30/immigration-boosts-u-s-life-...
- Animats 3y ago
  > Actually if US immigrants were their own country they'd have the best life expectancy in the world. They're holding up our stats, not pulling them down. Of course. The sick, the halt, and the lame never made the trip. The kids who survive the trip through the Darien Gap will do fine.[1] [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/13/americas/darien-gap-us-panama-colombia-intl-latam/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/13/americas/darien-gap-us-panama...
neffy 3y ago
You might want to think that, but unfortunately foreign born Americans (immigrants) actually have significantly longer life expectancies than American born do. Part of the reason for that is the much higher death rate in infants in the US, but it is still a very hard thing to explain away. I will also say as somebody who has lived in the US, US food is high calorie, but it is not better on any dimension, than what I can buy in any European street market. Possibly foreign born Americans stick with their original diets more.. who knows. But ops point about trading quality of life for meaningless economic statistics is spot on.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Isn't simply explained by the fact that immigration processes generally select for the fittest individuals? If you are not operating well it is going to be difficult to find the capacity to start the immigration process, and if you do make it that far you are likely to find out that the destination country doesn't want you. The same kind of phenomenon is seen in college graduates who love longer than non-graduates. There is no reason to think that attaining a college degree somehow cures what ails you. Rather, those who are not in tip top health don't have the capacity to make it all the way to graduation. It is even likely why we see those with more money living longer. While it is often thought they live longer because they are more able to care for themselves, at the same time if you are not in perfect health it is much harder to make money. The same capacity determines qualities like what kind of job you can focus your attention on, and even something as simple as a few extra unpaid sick days each year can greatly reduce your net wealth potential over time.
  - neffy 3y ago
    Not really. We also have to put this in the context of US life expectancy being significantly lower than comparable European countries. Britain for example has also had a very high immigration rate for a couple of centuries now, but no comparable difference is seen there. In the US money (and as proxy college education) is a gateway to a lot of things that influence health outcome, notably access to health treatment. So Occam's razor would suggest that is the simplest explanation - Europe has national health programs that provide access to good quality medical treatment for all levels of society. The US simply doesn't. See the infant mortality statistics.
tormeh 3y ago
Most industrialized countries have abundant food and access to cars. That's not the issue.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  That's very different from choosing to live unhealthy lifestyles.
twelve40 3y ago
> the larger amount of immigrants France has 10.3 percent of foreign-born population, the US has 13.6 percent. Even if we assume you didn't make up the "lower life expectancy" part, which by some comments seems like it is incorrect, the 3% difference in immigrants seems like a rounding error.

boeingUH60 3y ago

Obesity might play a role...they're eating too much food!

seizethecheese 3y ago

Can you propose an adjusted income metric that takes social programs into account?

swalling 3y ago
The easier method to do a more nuanced analysis is to use data visualization where you put income on one axis and lifespan on another. https://www.gapminder.org/answers/how-does-income-relate-to-life-expectancy/ https://www.gapminder.org/answers/how-does-income-relate-to-... Interesting question though. Someone's probably thought of this already and it's just not in wide use. Maybe something like annual income in dollars cut by average life expectancy?
derbOac 3y ago
Maybe something like median expected total accumulated net worth at longest known human lifespan? You'd want something that isn't distorted by income tails and reflects loss due to shortened lifespan. It's fuzzy though and gets dystopian really quickly.

camillomiller 3y ago

[flagged]

wyager 3y ago

> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9 Like 90% of these "gotchas" for southern states (including lifespan comparisons) end up decreasing or disappearing entirely when you condition on racial demographics. Not to say that invalidates the problem; just that comparing Mississippi to France doesn't make sense at all from a demographic standpoint.

hotpotamus 3y ago
Why does race need to be brought into it?
- WBrentWilliams 3y ago
  In the US, race is shorthand for class. In the US, class is not supposed to be noticed. Race is difficult (and insulting) to ignore. See also: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261303/being-black-living-in-the-red https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520261303/being-black-livin...
  - wyager 3y ago
    Many of these conditioning effects persist even when controlling for wealth. Evidently there are other factors at play. Perhaps dietary differences, differences in medical requirements, etc.
    - WBrentWilliams 3y ago
      A few confounding factors. Cross-checking and citation left and an exercise to the reader: Immigrants that get through the (metaphorical and literal) gauntlets to get into the US skew longevity via a Darwinian reading. Staying to any traditional diet, working with what is in season, has health impacts. Immigrants form communities out of necessity. Strong communities lead to longer lifespans and has a decrease on childhood deaths. None of these confounding factors corrects for the race-as-class indicator. They simply have a mathematical effect of smearing the statistics. There is a difference between wealth and class. Class implies wealth, not the other way around. Hence why many die in hospital, despite having wealth, due to their race implying class. This shorthand leads to many outcomes, including calibration of equipment problems that are masked by the race-implies-class effects.

jhbadger 3y ago

Life expectancy figures are misleading though. Many people take it to mean "this is how long an average elderly person is likely to live" but is an average of all ages at death meaning more young people dying brings down the number. As the article mentions, the primary cause for lower American life expectancy isn't that its old people are dying younger but rather the violence and drug epidemics causing more young people to die early.

swalling 3y ago
Either way the point that America is very rich but we do a comparatively terrible job of ensuring our people have long, happy lives is still true. You can pretty much apply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_... to any phenomenon that kills lots of Americans, except cancer and Alzheimer's. If we are so rich, why can't we provide for the kind of programs that would deal with so many early deaths? Money should be able to deal with the issues at the very bottom of Maslow's hierarchy.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  I think America is very rich because it incentivizes people to work their asses off all the time. Or in euphemistic corporate jargon, American society optimizes the heck out of everything to appease Wall St every quarter. If they were to focus on long, happy lives, they would not be as rich in the first place.
  - Jcowell 3y ago
    > incentivizes Incentivize is such an interesting word in these conversations. This word has two sides. One side is the word you would use usually with children. You want to “incentivize” them to do their homework? Add a reward. In this case the incentive isn’t that you’re rewarded for hard work. It’s that if you fuck up, and Fuck yo real bad, you can end up homeless, in debt and Ina poverty hole so deep you might never climb out of.
  - 3y ago

RestlessMind 3y ago

> The average French person has a life expectancy of 82. In Mississippi it’s 74.9, on par with Lithuania. That's a great bunch of cherries you picked there. If you are comparing Europe to the US, comparing France and Mississippi is disingenuous. Compare best-to-best or worst-to-worst [1][2]. The worst European countries are Azerbaijan (66.9), Moldova (70.2), Ukraine (71.2). The worst US states are W Virginia (74.8), Mississippi (74.9), Alabama (75.5). The best EU countries are Norway (83.2), Switzerland (83.1), Iceland (83.1). In the US, it's Hawaii (82.3), California (81.7), New York (81.4). In short, the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU. The worst of US is fares much better than the worst of EU. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

swalling 3y ago
The article itself cherry-picked France and Mississippi to compare income levels, which is why I continued the example. The additional data points are interesting and valuable, though speaking of cherry picking, Azerbaijan somewhat dubiously qualifies as a European country (neither it nor Moldova are part of the EU or Schengen, for instance). Anyway, the fact that the best of US is somewhat worse than the best of EU continues to help make my point, which is that high US income does not compensate for the poorer quality of life.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  I think the only point in the statement you're referencing is "Americas poorest state is richer than one of the richest countries in Europe."
csomar 3y ago
You are shooting yourself in the foot if you are comparing a US state to say, eh, Moldova. The countries you named are only European by geography. They are on par or worse than North Africa. That being said, life expectancy is a very bad measure in my opinion. Americans consume a shit-ton of junk food.