The original article points out that the primary difference between the US and the UK (as well as other peer countries) is that you're much more likely to die young in the US. A 5-year-old in the United States has a 4% chance of dying before age 40, whereas a 5-year-old in Australia, Austria, Canada, England and Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Switzerland has ~1% chance of dying before age 40 (values appear to range from ~0.9% to ~1.25%). This suggests that the US's shorter lifespans aren't primarily caused by poorer healthcare outcomes, but rather social problems like drug overdoses, gun violence, and car accidents.
As you can see in his chart at [1] from the same thread, drugs, violence, and accidents only explain less than 1/3 of the difference, so the rest would be mainly various disease/lifestyle and care related issues (the overwhelmingly top causes of death in the US [2]). I think those graphs are a easy to misread, the long tail of somewhat poorer results is less dramatic than that younger gap, but actually includes much of the disparity. In [1], you can see that the last cause, cardiovascular, explains more of the difference than drugs, violence, and accidents combined.
[2] "From 2020 to 2021, age-adjusted death rates increased for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death and decreased for 2. The rate increased 3.3% for heart disease (from 168.2 in 2020 to 173.8 in 2021), 1.7% for cancer (144.1 to 146.6), 22.5% for COVID-19 (85.0 to 104.1), 12.3% for unintentional injuries (57.6 to 64.7), 5.9% for stroke (38.8 to 41.1), 2.4% for diabetes (24.8 to 25.4), 9.0% for chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (13.3 to 14.5), and 7.1% for kidney disease (12.7 to 13.6)." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm
That's a fair point; I was simply trying to paraphrase the FT article in pointing out the importance of "social factors" (including diet/obesity/etc. leading to cardiovascular disease) in explaining US life expectancy and picked the three examples they used. I hadn't seen the chart you linked.
I still think drugs, guns, and accidents are worth specifically highlighting even if they aren't the single biggest driver of this disparity in life expectancy. I'd wager that most people are aware of America's obesity epidemic, but they might not realize the extent to which these three (big) factors make the US unlike it's peers. I certainly didn't.
> In [1], you can see that the last cause, cardiovascular, explains more of the difference than drugs, violence, and accidents combined.
This is for overall life expectancy, not 5 to 40 death rates though. I would expect cardio-metabolic disease is a significant driver of "early" deaths (say before 65) in those over 40 in the US compared to other developed countries.
It doesn't matter that most people die of cancer or heart diseases, as these are old people and these are also prevalent in other countries. When someone dies at 25 from a drug overdose, however, age expectancy is greatly reduced as more expected years are shaved off. The US has WAY more of those than other developed nations.
How am I supposed to read your first image? It appears to me that heart related issues, all else constant, have less an effect (2.2 for men) than all the other issues mentioned (2.3-3.3).
Deaths by billion vehicle miles in UK - 5.2. In US - 12.5. (both have tens of thousands of KSI, but the US has over twice as many per cap. In fact, way, more KSI from car accidents than even gun related homicide in the US. I hadn't realized that!)
Deaths by gun related homicide in UK - 200. In US - 20000. (Both numbers pale in comparison to motor vehicle deaths, but there are a lot more in the US. Probably to be expected as there is stringent firearm control in the UK.)
Deaths by drug overdose and poisoning in UK - ~5000. In US - um, yeah, well over 120000 if you count the poisonings too as the UK does. (I'll just say, I think we found one of our major culprits in this one.)
I'm thinking overdoses is a major contributor. It's the only way to get to millions in less than 10 years. Car accidents, maybe, but honestly it's not that much compared to the number of young people who die every year. Ditto, with gun related homicide, which is even less than car accidents.
I know we may not want to talk about it, but I also noticed major numbers in suicides among young people. (More than vehicle accidents and gun related homicides combined in 2021.) Not sure if that's where the parent comment was going though? So I left that out. It could be a contributor though? The numbers are there, which is what you need to impact averages.
My takeaway? Suicides and drug overdoses. Not to be taken lightly.
That's from 2019, numbers for the last 3 years are a little harder get but like attempts went up but deaths went down at least in most places but in a couple places deaths shot up a lot?
The problem with drug overdoses can be directly tied to the War on Drugs. The entire campaign criminalized addiction vs focusing on rehabilitation, it removed outlets from relief in many states and it has only made illicit drug quality significantly worse (versus removing access to them).
This is one of those metrics that really makes US federalism apparent and shows the drastic difference in outcomes from the two major parties. By reviewing the per state metrics[1], you can see that states that take a much lighter hand to drug criminalization and that offer state sponsored relief (California, for instance) have a much lower death rate to ones that take a heavy hand (southern states, New Mexico, etc).
Re: Vehicle miles. In the UK a license proves you are competent to drive. In the US a license proves you are not incompetent. The US driving test is set so that over 90% pass, deliberately. Because driving is seen as necessary.
Has that changed? Is the UK license standard as high as it once was?
> In fact, way, more KSI from car accidents than even gun related homicide in the US. I hadn't realized that!
Guns get an outsized portion of air time on most media. Especially crimes committed by legal weapons against white people. If all gun crimes were covered equally you would hears a lot more about gang violence and illegal weapons.
> Deaths by gun related homicide in UK - 200. In US - 20000. (Both numbers pale in comparison to motor vehicle deaths, but there are a lot more in the US. Probably to be expected as there is stringent firearm control in the UK.)
I'd be curious to see the difference between gun homicides and homicides. The UK has a huge knife crime problem.
> I'm thinking overdoses is a major contributor. It's the only way to get to millions in less than 10 years. Car accidents, maybe, but honestly it's not that much compared to the number of young people who die every year. Ditto, with gun related homicide, which is even less than car accidents.
Overdoses and drug related deaths. Drug addiction will shorten a person's lifespan by decades.
Your drug and gun deaths are totals right? That makes the US look worse than it really is due to the large population difference. If that’s the case then you can divide the US number by about 5 to make it actually comparable (and still terrible).
Yes, there has been a huge increase in the number of accidental fentanyl poisonings. I think this is now the leading cause of accidental death among young people, surpassing even vehicle crashes. Mexican drug cartels have been manufacturing counterfeit prescription painkillers and replacing active ingredients with fentanyl. They have bad quality control and sometimes just put in too much. Fentanyl is so potent that there is only a tiny difference between a recreational dose and a lethal dose, even for opioid addicts who have built up a tolerance.
That's why punishing Big Pharma for making opioid pills has the perverse effect of causing more opioid deaths due to no quality control on the illegal versions.
> but rather social problems like drug overdoses, gun violence, and car accidents.
I think you could make a reasonable argument that much of these actually are healthcare problems. But either way, investment in looking after people is the solution, what that looks like is probably more controversial.
"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday."
Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of.
And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.
Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them.
An indescribably sad statistic: In the US, a parent drives over and kills their kid in the driveway every other day [1].
All the guns also cause -a bunch of— some small kids to kill their siblings every year.
> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them.
While controversial because car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why this is the case, isn’t exactly known, but one of the theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and take more risks.
I’ve driven both large SUVs and smaller subcompacts, and I can talk at length on the pros and cons. However, as a driver, I can tell you that smaller cars are often bullied by larger cars, and this gives weight to the idea that people driving larger vehicles take larger risks, resulting in greater danger to the driver and to other cars and pedestrians.
There’s also the mistaken perception by older generations that smaller cars are inherently more dangerous; this was once true, and everyone can point to disastrously unsafe compact cars in the 1970s and 1980s. But due to modern technology and safety enhancements, this probably hasn’t been true for the last two decades or more. This older, erroneous belief continues to underlie why people choose larger vehicles today.
>All the guns also cause a bunch of small kids to kill their siblings every year.
No they don't, unless you're going to quibble about what a bunch is. Numbers that seem to show lots of deaths to "kids" pretty much always include age ranges old enough to include gang members.
> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them
and likewise, people are getting so big they can't drive their cars...
in Texas, police officers in some municipalities have requested that their vehicles be modified to elevate the steering wheel...they literally cannot jam their stomachs between the seat and the wheel, and if they push the seat back far enough they cannot reach the pedals
>"1 in 25 Americans being born will not make it to their 40th birthday."
>(The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
Here's a bit of an anecdote, but I bet my family isn't alone in this type of story... my cousin died from cardiac arrest at age 45. Keeping the story here brief - he was a high-income business owner who got into a tough spot in his marriage and business, found himself without health insurance when he had a medical episode. Knew something was wrong and would likely bankrupt him - and we think that's why he didn't follow up with his doctor and was dead two weeks later. Congenital issue, could have been easily resolved - but without health insurance it was probably a death sentence either physically or financially.
Now, this was just as the ACA was coming into play - but I'd argue it's moot. The ACA was well-intentioned, but has not actually improved the insurance or care situation for the majority of Americans. I need a surgery at present that won't be covered by my insurance to any meaningful degree, and being in rural America my care options are limited. So I'll live with regular pain because the system doesn't work. And I hear stories like this in my social circles weekly.
JFYI, the ACA did have a large impact on the health insurance coverage through expanding medicaid. The percentage uninsured was halved from 18.4% to 9.1-9.8% (in states which expanded medicaid. In nonexpansion states, the uninsured percentage went from 22.7% to 17.1-19%).
I hear you about the health care situation though. Health insurance is definitely not the same thing as health care.
My buddy separated his shoulder snowboarding when he was 22, but had no health insurance because he was working at the ski resort for something like $6/hr (US Ski Resorts are legally allowed to pay below minimum wage... go figure).
So he never went to the Doctor, because he couldn't afford it. He's 41 now, and that shoulder impacts almost every day of his life.
Something happened during the initial stages of the pandemic. People lost their absolute minds and aggressive and reckless driving got way, way worst than I've ever seen.
Hell, about an hour ago a cop tailgated me while I was going 15 over the limit, wove through traffic to cut me off, run a red light, then damn near ran another driver off the road. No lights, no emergency, just an asshole. This is the behavior you have to expect from all drivers now.
At least two or three times a week I have a close call that would wreck my car or seriously hurt someone, and I pretty much only drive up and down the one road between my house and the office, it's a 5 mile drive.
There's something very deeply wrong in American society, and I don't see things improving any time soon.
I thought people in the US drove like insane idiots long before the pandemic. Weaving in and out of lanes, excessive speeding, road rage over the slightest inconvenience and, the dumbest one to me because it is virtually effortless, failure to use turn signals. It's very easy to drive safely but a good chunk of divers seem to outright refuse.
Having said that, the data backs you up. 7% increase in per capita road fatalities in 2020. Then a 10.5% increase on top of that in 2021!
>There's something very deeply wrong in American society, and I don't see things improving any time soon.
Any hypothesis as to what it is? I think it is a lack of community. We've become transactional and virtual/online communities are not sufficient.
In terms of driving I think it got a lot worse during the pandemic because with the lack of daily commuter traffic allowed people to drive faster and hence more recklessly.
I've noticed the post pandemic crazy driving anecdotally as well and it's alarming. Lots more tailgating, lane changing where they almost clip you and driving really fast while passing on the right.
I think defensive driving is becoming more important as well and I worry far more about driving at night, as people get more erratic, than I used to.
>Something happened during the initial stages of the pandemic. People lost their absolute minds and aggressive and reckless driving got way, way worst than I've ever seen.
That's easy enough. People who were socially minded stayed home; people with an individualistic attitude ignored recommendations. You hear similar stories from people working in customer service - the average quality of the person they had to deal with plummeted.
What's a bit peculiar is that, according to you, road culture has not recovered.
Keep in mind that while we had cell phones for a while, it’s only within the past 10 years that the whole “distraction economy” became a thing, so while people may have used phones to communicate back in the day, nowadays they might be using the phones even more just to attend to those distractions.
A Ford F150 is most dangerous to small pedestrians (i.e. your kids or the kids of those you visit) in the driveway which you can't see over your hood due to its size.
Plus, modern US trucks are as big (if not as heavy) as WW2 tanks. Photos taken from the infamous DailyMail, but they look correct to me, that is [1] and [2]
> Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0.
This isn’t true for the US, cars are actually more dangerous due to the prevalence of SUVs that skirt safety regulations by being sold as light trucks.
In the US cars likely kill more people through lack of exercise than through accidents.
The UK has small compact towns and cities with street layouts designed in the horse and buggy days that force people to get out of their car and walk around the shops - there are very very few if any drive-thru businesses and only the big newer supermarkets have dedicated parking lots.
Which are omnipresent all over the world but I don't believe the uptick in traffic fatalities is (at least in Australia they were considerably lower in 2020-21 due to covid lockdowns. Mind you we also have very strict laws and stiff fines for mobile phone usage while in control of a vehicle, even if it's idling in traffic or, yes, in a drive-thru lane - technically it's illegal to use your phone to pay in that scenario, unless you switch the engine off first).
It’s the phones. I have to drive my kids regularly 45 minutes to school on a highway with very high accident rates. It is people staring at their phones approaching dangerous parts of the road with lots of sudden stops and interchanges.
A sudden secondary effect - legal pot is leading to many more stoned drivers where I live (NJ).
>Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.
Jevons Paradox perhaps; you make the cars safer, so people feel more empowered to drive recklessly.
Drivers in the US just seem incredibly aggressive to me. I remember crossing some street in downtown Pittsburgh, and a car coming towards me. The guy was clearly seeing me, and accelerating instead of slowing down. I jumped forwards and survived.
American people seem aggressive in general, and I say that as one. I didn't realize how bad it was until I finally went on a vacation overseas. I don't know if it's something in the water or what.
As a counterpoint I’m an Australian living in the Bay Area and drivers here are more considerate than back home. In law abiding Melbourne where I grew up, drivers will happy run you over if you’re jay walking because they supposedly have right of way.
Ive lived around the country and the driving culture varies significantly from region to region. East Coast cities are the worst, whereas I find Seattle, where I live now, very east going. Having moved from the east coast, it shocked me to see drivers just stop for pedestrians, even outside of marked off crosswalks. Try that in NY and you’re dead.
I saw the same thing in Europe, southern Italy was very chaotic roads compared to Northern Italy.
Sure there will be lots of hypotheses for why this is the case. In my experience, though, you can almost ignore longevity and just look at these sociological differences that make the quality of life better for the English:
1. You could easily argue that frequenting a pub shortens your lifespan, but I just loved "pub culture" when I visited colleagues in England. It's a great antidote to loneliness.
2. You can argue all you want that the NHS has loads of problems, but even some rich people in the US, when faced with serious medical issues, their first thought is "will this bankrupt me" or "will I get hit with a giant unexpected medical bill"? Our healthcare system in the US is simply indefensible.
3. Cities and towns in England are just much more walkable, "congenial" in general, e.g. row houses instead of separate, fenced off suburban houses with yards in the US.
In the US rich people can get worse healthcare because doctors have incentive
to provide unnecessary operations and medications due to
A) legal liability
B) marketing of treatments and medications to the public means patients demand them. Patients shop doctors until they find one that gives them what they want.
C) money incentive.
For example, US opioid epidemic stems from legal opioid prescriptions.
It seems pretty likely that the US healthcare decisions at the federal level are to blame. This data suggests it isn't the access to healthcare that is to blame as much as the governance of the entire system is forcing bad outcomes. The effect here is too widespread to be "pub culture".
I could see city planning being a contributor. But the effect is so extreme the place to start is deliberate policy. It would be hard for that to be the case without high-level standardisation on terrible ideas. The US does link healthcare and employment so that might be the root cause; it is a stupid link.
Nailed it. The tying of healthcare to one's job is its primary problem in the USA. This idiotic relationship arose because of incompetent legislation during WWII that was never fixed. The government applied wage caps, but failed to anticipate employers' substitution of "benefits" for wages. So companies sweetened the pot with health insurance to work around wage caps, and the government neglected to close that loophole. Huge and disastrous mistake.
Today, millions of Americans are deluded into thinking that their "employer-provided" insurance is free. Because the true cost is buried in pay-stub line items that nobody looks at (if it's even required to be there; I don't know), it's huge.
This "system" serves corporations, not people. Big companies get a workforce replete with people chained to dead-end jobs by their healthcare; insurance companies get fat, fat payouts; and small businesses and individuals get screwed.
My best friend runs a small business in the USA that actually makes things in a factory and employs people. Why the hell should be be an insurance broker as well? And if you're self-employed... Obamacare is the only thing saving your ass. And if your income isn't in the sweet spot, it's not really affordable either.
So we are really screwed hard. You'll never get Republicans to defy their corporate owners and lobbyists to reform this shitshow, nor will you get their base to comprehend that they're being ripped off and demand such reform.
Employer-funded insurance should be taxed out of existence and replaced by employer-provided CHILD CARE. Now that's something that keeps people out of the workforce and actually makes sense for an employer to provide.
> It seems pretty likely that the US healthcare decisions at the federal level are to blame. This data suggests it isn't the access to healthcare that is to blame as much as the governance of the entire system is forcing bad outcomes.
What is your basis for that? Does it vary by state - I'm pretty sure states that invest less in health get much worse outcomes. And how can people without health insurance somehow get sufficient healthcare?
I've been in communities where many people lack health insurance (and note the bubble HN is in, where those people are seldom here to speak for themselves - for most people, it's like I visited a foreign country). I remember one person, after a car accident with many broken bones, spending 13 hours in an ER, in extreme pain, waiting to be seen. One older parent described to me removing maggots they found on their diabetic adult child's legs.
> I could see city planning being a contributor
Based on what? A dislike of city planning?
Obviously the US does not provide healthcare to its citizens, unlike every other wealthy country. You don't need much creative, insightful thinking to find the problem here. Citizens want it, the Democrats want it, almost every other major political party in the developed world supports it afaik. Like climate change, gun control and safety, and more, only the GOP opposes it; that's the problem.
Ad 2. - freelancers/contractors have the same problem as regular employees in the US, no? E.g. one gets long covid, can't work for 12 months, runs out of money, then loses any medical insurance due to inability to pay anyway?
I saw this other life-expectancy-related story a a while ago, and there are probably COVID-related reasons, but I’m surprised this hasn’t got more publicity:
> China's life expectancy is now higher than that of the US [1].
Here’s a slightly deeper dive into this story [2].
Anyone in the US (or just anyone really) considering visiting Blackpool to see what is driving this equivalence from our end - don't.
Historically, it was a pleasant seaside resort town. The rise of cheap flights combined with a decades long neglect of northern England has meant that all of these Victorian era holiday destinations have fallen to ruin, with Blackpool falling the farthest.
Left alone, it would just have been a shabby, run-down place - but to make matters worse, the cheap guest houses and B&Bs became the ideal place for drug addicts to live, or homeless people to be shoved out of the way. Blackpool hangs off the bottom of the rest of the UK districts in terms of life expectancy because of the normal health downsides of poverty, combined with the extra problems associated with excessive levels of drug and alcohol abuse.
The issue is common to other seaside towns in the UK although the figures suggest that Blackpool has a larger concentration of the low cost accommodation you mention.
Christ Jesus, the USA are on average as good as Merthyr Tydfil, the epicenter of Welsh coal mining, which Maggie Thatcher destroyed. It's bad, but no one anticipated it to be that bad.
I'm not surprised at all. If you compare individual US states to other countries, some parts of the US south have worse healthcare systems than third-world nations. The US is by far the worst health country in the OECD.
I don't think it's really about healthcare. It's about everything else in life, that makes people obese or driven into a life of drugs (meth, etc.). Healthcare doesn't really save you from that.
Yeah, well, as long as I can sling code for 100K+ a year in this fine country, it’s not my problem what happens thousands of miles away over in Mississippi.
Do you understand the irony of saying this when we're literally on a thread discussing and caring about the problem that is obviously more affecting the demographics that are non-HN'ers?
Its actually worse, imagine all that with no social safety net, no functioning medical system. Here our medical and educational systems are so destroyed that not even the wealthy have a good outcome, wealth just enables their kids to get into addiction earlier than poor kids.
Obesity. Americans are so obese that they don’t even recognise anymore that they are fat when they are fat. Every time US based tech people come to the UK or Europe for conferences it’s incredibly eye opening what they think is healthy and how they see themselves. Plenty of folks who think they eat and drink healthy and are in a good body condition and all I can see is a big wobbly man with barely any hair on their head drinking diet cokes like water. They think eating Mexican tacos is healthy and eating a big KFC is unhealthy. In comparison to here, we think eating home cooked food is healthy and eating a greasy cheesy Mexican taco is unhealthy fast food and a KFC is just plain disgusting.
I think you’re really overselling the UK here. 26% of adults are obese with child obesity rising. Every high street is also full of every fast food chain one can think of.
I was with you until the hair on the head part. Do you know of any established link between balding and other factors? Is it more prevalent on either side of the pond?
It would be interesting to see a proper study of baldness by country and age over time as I'd imagine much can be put to genetics, but diet and sleep rates etc might increase the speed of hairloss, resulting in decreasing age of bald men, rather then an increasing rate.
The US is difficult to compare with other developed countries because it essentially has (1) affluent core regions and (2) poor peripheral regions. The US is essentially bimodal.
The core regions resemble the developed world, with similar levels of education, wealth, and political perspectives.
The peripheral regions are much worse off. Entire states, such as West Virginia, are peripheral. Think low wealth, low life expectancies, and entirely different politics from the rest of the developed world.
If you average values from both regions, you won’t really be characterizing either of them. The value will be too low for everyone in the core, and it will be too high for everyone in the periphery.
So when comparing the US to other countries, you’ll get a much more accurate picture by providing separate summary statistics for the core and periphery.
This is true, but it's more fractal than that. You go to the most affluent, in your words "core" region like San Francisco, and you still find it to be bimodal: high wealth, high education, clean and tidy on one side, and medieval conditions just two streets away. Also, I suspect general health levels are lower even in the affluent parts compared to the rest of the developed world due to wide-spread obesity.
I see why it’s more confortable to see it your way. But somehow it seems to prove the point of the OP: individualism. Even if one sees the US as two different countries cohabitating, this data forces to consider the US as a whole, and maybe it’s healthy as a country.
Oh I’m sure you could find a (1) high-income workers and higher (wink wink) and (2) the unwashed, hinterland masses comparison between countries if you wanted. But then one asks what kind of point you would be proving with that.
Readit News
[1] https://nitter.moomoo.me/pic/orig/media%2FFsjYUjhWcAEatMo.jp...
[2] "From 2020 to 2021, age-adjusted death rates increased for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death and decreased for 2. The rate increased 3.3% for heart disease (from 168.2 in 2020 to 173.8 in 2021), 1.7% for cancer (144.1 to 146.6), 22.5% for COVID-19 (85.0 to 104.1), 12.3% for unintentional injuries (57.6 to 64.7), 5.9% for stroke (38.8 to 41.1), 2.4% for diabetes (24.8 to 25.4), 9.0% for chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (13.3 to 14.5), and 7.1% for kidney disease (12.7 to 13.6)." https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm
I still think drugs, guns, and accidents are worth specifically highlighting even if they aren't the single biggest driver of this disparity in life expectancy. I'd wager that most people are aware of America's obesity epidemic, but they might not realize the extent to which these three (big) factors make the US unlike it's peers. I certainly didn't.
This is for overall life expectancy, not 5 to 40 death rates though. I would expect cardio-metabolic disease is a significant driver of "early" deaths (say before 65) in those over 40 in the US compared to other developed countries.
Deaths by billion vehicle miles in UK - 5.2. In US - 12.5. (both have tens of thousands of KSI, but the US has over twice as many per cap. In fact, way, more KSI from car accidents than even gun related homicide in the US. I hadn't realized that!)
Deaths by gun related homicide in UK - 200. In US - 20000. (Both numbers pale in comparison to motor vehicle deaths, but there are a lot more in the US. Probably to be expected as there is stringent firearm control in the UK.)
Deaths by drug overdose and poisoning in UK - ~5000. In US - um, yeah, well over 120000 if you count the poisonings too as the UK does. (I'll just say, I think we found one of our major culprits in this one.)
I'm thinking overdoses is a major contributor. It's the only way to get to millions in less than 10 years. Car accidents, maybe, but honestly it's not that much compared to the number of young people who die every year. Ditto, with gun related homicide, which is even less than car accidents.
I know we may not want to talk about it, but I also noticed major numbers in suicides among young people. (More than vehicle accidents and gun related homicides combined in 2021.) Not sure if that's where the parent comment was going though? So I left that out. It could be a contributor though? The numbers are there, which is what you need to impact averages.
My takeaway? Suicides and drug overdoses. Not to be taken lightly.
That's from 2019, numbers for the last 3 years are a little harder get but like attempts went up but deaths went down at least in most places but in a couple places deaths shot up a lot?
https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/news/042722-COVID-adolesc...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/youth-suicide-attempts-...
This is one of those metrics that really makes US federalism apparent and shows the drastic difference in outcomes from the two major parties. By reviewing the per state metrics[1], you can see that states that take a much lighter hand to drug criminalization and that offer state sponsored relief (California, for instance) have a much lower death rate to ones that take a heavy hand (southern states, New Mexico, etc).
1 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/drug_poisoning_mor...
UK driving test is difficult, and I suspect drunk driving is much lower because distances are lesser and public transport is better.
> suicides
Much easier when you have a gun around
Has that changed? Is the UK license standard as high as it once was?
That's because the media only reports on unusual deaths.
For example, sometimes I'll see the emergency crews pulling a body out of Lake Washington. It never makes the news. Drowning deaths are too common.
Guns get an outsized portion of air time on most media. Especially crimes committed by legal weapons against white people. If all gun crimes were covered equally you would hears a lot more about gang violence and illegal weapons.
> Deaths by gun related homicide in UK - 200. In US - 20000. (Both numbers pale in comparison to motor vehicle deaths, but there are a lot more in the US. Probably to be expected as there is stringent firearm control in the UK.)
I'd be curious to see the difference between gun homicides and homicides. The UK has a huge knife crime problem.
> I'm thinking overdoses is a major contributor. It's the only way to get to millions in less than 10 years. Car accidents, maybe, but honestly it's not that much compared to the number of young people who die every year. Ditto, with gun related homicide, which is even less than car accidents.
Overdoses and drug related deaths. Drug addiction will shorten a person's lifespan by decades.
https://peterattiamd.com/anthonyhipolito/
Dead Comment
I think you could make a reasonable argument that much of these actually are healthcare problems. But either way, investment in looking after people is the solution, what that looks like is probably more controversial.
Certainly that Americans die young, but that could be because American healthcare does worse for people between 5 and 40.
Eg. You'd prefer to be in a car crash in Canada, because it's more likely that the healthcare will take better care of you
Dead Comment
Wow. Actually impressed with the analysis backing this up. If you read the entire thread, he actually covers nearly every correlating factor I could think of.
And it's pretty clearly drugs, guns, suicide, and cars. (The cardio health one doesn't seem as strong).
The one that is crazy to me is the uptick in driving fatalities. Cars are an order of magnitude safer than they used to be and we were trending towards 0. An entire generation has to be that much more reckless than before to make that kind of a dent.
All the guns also cause -a bunch of— some small kids to kill their siblings every year.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna52109
While controversial because car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why this is the case, isn’t exactly known, but one of the theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and take more risks.
I’ve driven both large SUVs and smaller subcompacts, and I can talk at length on the pros and cons. However, as a driver, I can tell you that smaller cars are often bullied by larger cars, and this gives weight to the idea that people driving larger vehicles take larger risks, resulting in greater danger to the driver and to other cars and pedestrians.
There’s also the mistaken perception by older generations that smaller cars are inherently more dangerous; this was once true, and everyone can point to disastrously unsafe compact cars in the 1970s and 1980s. But due to modern technology and safety enhancements, this probably hasn’t been true for the last two decades or more. This older, erroneous belief continues to underlie why people choose larger vehicles today.
https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/ford-focus-2022-5-d...
I laugh every time I walk to my car because I don't want to cry.
No they don't, unless you're going to quibble about what a bunch is. Numbers that seem to show lots of deaths to "kids" pretty much always include age ranges old enough to include gang members.
I don't know why every car doesn't have around-the-car view cameras right now. New teslas have all the cameras, but don't show the view!
That goes double for trucks of all types - even though they are professionally driven.
and likewise, people are getting so big they can't drive their cars...
in Texas, police officers in some municipalities have requested that their vehicles be modified to elevate the steering wheel...they literally cannot jam their stomachs between the seat and the wheel, and if they push the seat back far enough they cannot reach the pedals
Here's a bit of an anecdote, but I bet my family isn't alone in this type of story... my cousin died from cardiac arrest at age 45. Keeping the story here brief - he was a high-income business owner who got into a tough spot in his marriage and business, found himself without health insurance when he had a medical episode. Knew something was wrong and would likely bankrupt him - and we think that's why he didn't follow up with his doctor and was dead two weeks later. Congenital issue, could have been easily resolved - but without health insurance it was probably a death sentence either physically or financially.
Now, this was just as the ACA was coming into play - but I'd argue it's moot. The ACA was well-intentioned, but has not actually improved the insurance or care situation for the majority of Americans. I need a surgery at present that won't be covered by my insurance to any meaningful degree, and being in rural America my care options are limited. So I'll live with regular pain because the system doesn't work. And I hear stories like this in my social circles weekly.
I hear you about the health care situation though. Health insurance is definitely not the same thing as health care.
https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/migrated_legacy_fil...
My buddy separated his shoulder snowboarding when he was 22, but had no health insurance because he was working at the ski resort for something like $6/hr (US Ski Resorts are legally allowed to pay below minimum wage... go figure).
So he never went to the Doctor, because he couldn't afford it. He's 41 now, and that shoulder impacts almost every day of his life.
Hell, about an hour ago a cop tailgated me while I was going 15 over the limit, wove through traffic to cut me off, run a red light, then damn near ran another driver off the road. No lights, no emergency, just an asshole. This is the behavior you have to expect from all drivers now.
At least two or three times a week I have a close call that would wreck my car or seriously hurt someone, and I pretty much only drive up and down the one road between my house and the office, it's a 5 mile drive.
There's something very deeply wrong in American society, and I don't see things improving any time soon.
Having said that, the data backs you up. 7% increase in per capita road fatalities in 2020. Then a 10.5% increase on top of that in 2021!
Any hypothesis as to what it is? I think it is a lack of community. We've become transactional and virtual/online communities are not sufficient.
In terms of driving I think it got a lot worse during the pandemic because with the lack of daily commuter traffic allowed people to drive faster and hence more recklessly.
I think defensive driving is becoming more important as well and I worry far more about driving at night, as people get more erratic, than I used to.
That's easy enough. People who were socially minded stayed home; people with an individualistic attitude ignored recommendations. You hear similar stories from people working in customer service - the average quality of the person they had to deal with plummeted.
What's a bit peculiar is that, according to you, road culture has not recovered.
Cars in the US have gotten much larger and heavier in recent years.
A Ford F150 might be safe to drive, but it’s not safer for pedestrians and other road users than the smaller cars we used to have.
Keep in mind that while we had cell phones for a while, it’s only within the past 10 years that the whole “distraction economy” became a thing, so while people may have used phones to communicate back in the day, nowadays they might be using the phones even more just to attend to those distractions.
[1] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/25/21/45875073-9823577-...
[2] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/25/21/45876985-9823577-...
This isn’t true for the US, cars are actually more dangerous due to the prevalence of SUVs that skirt safety regulations by being sold as light trucks.
Smartphones.
A sudden secondary effect - legal pot is leading to many more stoned drivers where I live (NJ).
Jevons Paradox perhaps; you make the cars safer, so people feel more empowered to drive recklessly.
I saw the same thing in Europe, southern Italy was very chaotic roads compared to Northern Italy.
Or maybe they are driving more dangerous vehicles (e.g. bigger and heavier)?
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1. You could easily argue that frequenting a pub shortens your lifespan, but I just loved "pub culture" when I visited colleagues in England. It's a great antidote to loneliness.
2. You can argue all you want that the NHS has loads of problems, but even some rich people in the US, when faced with serious medical issues, their first thought is "will this bankrupt me" or "will I get hit with a giant unexpected medical bill"? Our healthcare system in the US is simply indefensible.
3. Cities and towns in England are just much more walkable, "congenial" in general, e.g. row houses instead of separate, fenced off suburban houses with yards in the US.
A) legal liability
B) marketing of treatments and medications to the public means patients demand them. Patients shop doctors until they find one that gives them what they want.
C) money incentive.
For example, US opioid epidemic stems from legal opioid prescriptions.
Here are the counterfactuals: https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1641799922583326720/... drugs, traffic, diet, guns.
I could see city planning being a contributor. But the effect is so extreme the place to start is deliberate policy. It would be hard for that to be the case without high-level standardisation on terrible ideas. The US does link healthcare and employment so that might be the root cause; it is a stupid link.
Today, millions of Americans are deluded into thinking that their "employer-provided" insurance is free. Because the true cost is buried in pay-stub line items that nobody looks at (if it's even required to be there; I don't know), it's huge.
This "system" serves corporations, not people. Big companies get a workforce replete with people chained to dead-end jobs by their healthcare; insurance companies get fat, fat payouts; and small businesses and individuals get screwed.
My best friend runs a small business in the USA that actually makes things in a factory and employs people. Why the hell should be be an insurance broker as well? And if you're self-employed... Obamacare is the only thing saving your ass. And if your income isn't in the sweet spot, it's not really affordable either.
So we are really screwed hard. You'll never get Republicans to defy their corporate owners and lobbyists to reform this shitshow, nor will you get their base to comprehend that they're being ripped off and demand such reform.
Employer-funded insurance should be taxed out of existence and replaced by employer-provided CHILD CARE. Now that's something that keeps people out of the workforce and actually makes sense for an employer to provide.
What is your basis for that? Does it vary by state - I'm pretty sure states that invest less in health get much worse outcomes. And how can people without health insurance somehow get sufficient healthcare?
I've been in communities where many people lack health insurance (and note the bubble HN is in, where those people are seldom here to speak for themselves - for most people, it's like I visited a foreign country). I remember one person, after a car accident with many broken bones, spending 13 hours in an ER, in extreme pain, waiting to be seen. One older parent described to me removing maggots they found on their diabetic adult child's legs.
> I could see city planning being a contributor
Based on what? A dislike of city planning?
Obviously the US does not provide healthcare to its citizens, unlike every other wealthy country. You don't need much creative, insightful thinking to find the problem here. Citizens want it, the Democrats want it, almost every other major political party in the developed world supports it afaik. Like climate change, gun control and safety, and more, only the GOP opposes it; that's the problem.
> China's life expectancy is now higher than that of the US [1].
Here’s a slightly deeper dive into this story [2].
[1] https://qz.com/china-life-expectancy-exceeds-us-1849483265
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/china-us-life-expectancy-birth-2021...
Historically, it was a pleasant seaside resort town. The rise of cheap flights combined with a decades long neglect of northern England has meant that all of these Victorian era holiday destinations have fallen to ruin, with Blackpool falling the farthest.
Left alone, it would just have been a shabby, run-down place - but to make matters worse, the cheap guest houses and B&Bs became the ideal place for drug addicts to live, or homeless people to be shoved out of the way. Blackpool hangs off the bottom of the rest of the UK districts in terms of life expectancy because of the normal health downsides of poverty, combined with the extra problems associated with excessive levels of drug and alcohol abuse.
—HN
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https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03...
It would be interesting to see a proper study of baldness by country and age over time as I'd imagine much can be put to genetics, but diet and sleep rates etc might increase the speed of hairloss, resulting in decreasing age of bald men, rather then an increasing rate.
The core regions resemble the developed world, with similar levels of education, wealth, and political perspectives.
The peripheral regions are much worse off. Entire states, such as West Virginia, are peripheral. Think low wealth, low life expectancies, and entirely different politics from the rest of the developed world.
If you average values from both regions, you won’t really be characterizing either of them. The value will be too low for everyone in the core, and it will be too high for everyone in the periphery.
So when comparing the US to other countries, you’ll get a much more accurate picture by providing separate summary statistics for the core and periphery.