3 ms·

I may be off my rocker, but it seems kind of weird to specifically discount murders and such when calculating life expectancy. I mean, I get that the health car

I may be off my rocker, but it seems kind of weird to specifically discount murders and such when calculating life expectancy. I mean, I get that the health care system probably can't have much effect on murder as a cause of death, but life expectancy is life expectancy no matter what eventually ends up killing you. (My reference to Hans Rosling was more of an aside, I didn't mean to conflate average life expectancy with the standard of health care. I apologize if that wasn't clear.)

alexeisadeski3 12y ago
You're totally correct, but so is the paper discussed in the WSJ link. Different measures of life expectancy for different purposes. It's a bit like the inequality data "showing" that the US has higher post-tax&transfer inequality than does France. -News flash- nations with stronger social safety nets have stronger social safety nets! It seems that the pertinent measure would be pre-tax&transfer income inequality... a measure which just so happens to show the US and France have identical GINIs. But you won't read that in the NYT...