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Dodo B Bird's avatar

So if social security followed lifespan than Minimum Wage Workers would start collecting social security retirement decades earlier than wealthy college educated government employees who live many years longer.

And how can 50 years of working at..just above...or below Minimum Wage result in a "retirement" income of $813 a month. Years of working with people with physical and developmental disabilities and heavy lifting of incontinent adults unable to stand and $813 a month?

Dodobbird.pixels.com

https://www.gofundme.com/f/my-puppy-wants-a-cheeseburger

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Rob's avatar

Jeremy there is so much wrong with your logic and stats.

Every single abortion ends a life lowering the life expectancy of the baby to zero. So greater access by design lowers life expectancy.

Drug overdoses would plummet with the closing our borders to the flood of illegal drugs from China and Central America.

If we could prevent suicide in this country life expectancy would skyrocket. That is mental health awareness and care not gun control.

Also lowering dependence on tobacco and alcohol would increase life expectancy among all races and income levels

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Eric's avatar

Abortion is not part of the statistics and would have no effect on this. Drug problems could be reduced by legalizing drugs, controlling quality and access. Gun control would lower the death rates by both violence and suicide. We are in agreement on Tobacco and alcohol.

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Carlisle Landel's avatar

I wonder what is going on in the outliers such as Hudspeth and Presidio Counties in TX or Union County FL. Is it simply that they have small populations and therefore more statistical "noise", or is there something else interesting going on?

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Union County in Florida has the state's largest prison and the 3rd largest prison in the country. Definitely explains one of the reason why Union has such low life expectancy rates

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Carlisle Landel's avatar

Indeed, that'll do it on the bottom end. For sure, prisons and a large Native population is not good for average life expectancy. But then, how is the median income so relatively large in Union County?

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Tray Bogus's avatar

HOORAY - FINALLY DATA TO SUPPORT WHAT I SUPPOSED: REPUBLICANS ARE KILLING THEMSELVES FASTER THAN THE REST OF THE POPULATION. BAD LUCK, GOP!

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Michelle Angus's avatar

Extremely interesting. I don't understand the graph showing health care costs per capita, though. I don't understand what it's representing exactly - the lines begin and end in different spots, so is that showing a range? If so, why are we given an average per capita? Is healthcare really that expensive in Switzerland and Norway? Do those countries support people who can't afford those costs or is it like the US?

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

It's how healthcare costs per capita have changed from 2000 to 2018. The blue dot is where costs were in 2000 and the green dot (usually further to the right) is where costs were in 2018. So if you lived in the U.S. in 2018, you were paying more than double your healthcare costs compared to 2000

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Wigan's avatar

That chart that shows increases in cost per capita should really be log-scaled, because the purpose is measuring the rate of change. With a linear scale the higher cost countries will normally seem to be increasing far more rapidly than the lower cost countries, even if they were growing slower in % terms.

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Michelle Angus's avatar

Oh! I can see it now. Thank you for explaining.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Of course glad to hear it

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Tambria's avatar

Bah, Not one mention of documented rate of homicide and suicides by primarily guns. Politics without accurate context with data is just wrong.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

We've got several whole articles dedicated to the subject! But yes you are right that we don't dig into that too deeply in this piece. Check it out:

https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/violent-crime-and-inequality

and

https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/police-killings-and-inequality

and

https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/mental-health-and-inequality

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Richard carlson's avatar

Re the relationship between income and longevity, it may be that people that are intellectually capable of making higher incomes are also intellectually capable of making better decisions regarding healthy lifestyles. Longevity and incomes may be indirectly related, not directly related. Logically this hypothesis hangs together. It would be worth looking at.

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Greg Spencer's avatar

Yes, it takes rigorous and honest analysis to be able to differentiate correlation and causation.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Healthy living isn't always a decision though - there may be many environmental factors beyond one's control that impact your life expectancy (like being born next to a toxic site like a superfund)

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Greg Spencer's avatar

Has anyone assessed that? My vocation requires skepticism, independence, as well as looking for non-confirming data once I feel I'm close to an answer. I'm wary of emotional appeals or antidotes easily manipulated. Stick to the data in the proper context and with appropriate caveats and you have a very powerful tool here. Handle carefully.

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mechtheist's avatar

It would have been good to see life expectancy added to the comparison across countries, that data is usually a real downer but quite informative.

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Suti's avatar

in Switzerland, it's 84 years

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mechtheist's avatar

They spend almost as much as the US but with better life expectancy>>84 vs 78. Most developed countries spend closer to half what the US spends and still get higher life expectancy. I'm curious about why the Swiss are almost an outlier along with the US, and Norway is out there a bit too in terms of expenditures. In the US, one absurdly high cost is the administrative resources devoted to just dealing with all the health insurance BS, it's like a effing 1/3 of total costs, roughly $2500 per capita.

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Wigan's avatar

There's a pretty clear relationship between wealth of a country and healthcare spending. Wealthier countries spend more on healthcare both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of spending. That's why Norway and Switzerland are outliers within Europe.

The US spends more than Europe partly because we are wealthier and partly because we have other inefficiencies.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Such great stats thanks for sharing them!

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

So much higher than the US average! What's the secret?

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Suti's avatar

Switzerland does not have free healthcare; in fact, it can be more expensive than other European countries. However, because health insurance is mandatory, everyone is insured, and those with a low income can benefit from social benefits or subsidies regarding health insurance

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Suti's avatar

might be the wealth gap btw the rich and the poor. Sweden and Switzerland have similar life expectancy and similar Gini Index: US close to 40, the other two close to 30.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Wealth gap is definitely a huge issue in U.S. and one of the leading causes of the life expectancy divide

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mechtheist's avatar

There are a LOT of, I'll just call them social pathologies, resulting from the gap and the still-prevalent racism, like the food desert mentioned in the article, and even with Obama care, it's still very expensive to get care, lots of folks can't afford what they really need. I also wouldn't be surprised if many simply can't deal with the complexity of trying to navigate the system. they put up so many roadblocks because they do everything possible to make sure someone doesn't get a penny more than the minimum they're supposed to get. I'd bet in a lot of ways, it's easier for the corps and the rich to get multimillion dollar subsidies that are rigged into the system than it is getting subsidized health insurance for a family. It's the same with other programs aimed at helping the poor, I don't even want to get into the insanity of how that's (mis)handled.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

100% would have been cool to see

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Marc Sobel's avatar

"Some people say" you plagiarized that first image from a map of the Confederacy shortly after Bull Run.

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Dorpsgek's avatar

Minor quibble. On the second chart Income v Life Exp, the linear regression looks like a really bad fit once it gets to the high income - high life exp range. Personally I would have left it off.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Yep we definitely thought about doing a better fit line there, but we thought the straight line was just cleaner for users to understand

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Kristin's avatar

What’s going on in Alaska? Isn’t that mostly white?

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

The more rural regions in Alaska tend to have lower life expectancy

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Dr. Joy Brooke Fairfield's avatar

Native Americans (Yup'ik, Tlingit, Inupiat, etc) account for 20% of the population in Alaska, a larger ratio than any other state in the US. So these findings tracks with inequitably early death rates for indigenous people across this colonized continent.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Most definitely. Oglala Lakota county in South Dakota has the lowest life expectancy of any county in America and is +90% Native American

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Cotton Ball of Darkness's avatar

The map needs to be able to expand further. I was looking for my county in eastern Michigan, and the map wouldn't expand far enough for me to tell.

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Let me know if it's working for you now!

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Jeremy Ney's avatar

Download the data and check out the insights here: https://www.americaninequality.io/life-expectancy

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