Longevity in America

When you read this, it is a little depressing:

"Life expectancy at age 50 in the United States ranks 29th highest in the world in 2006 according to the World Health Organization (WHO 2009). It falls 3.3 years behind the leader, Japan, and more than 1.5 years behind Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Iceland, Spain, and Switzerland. At the conventional value of $100,000 per additional year of life (Cutler 2004), the relative loss of life in the US above age 50 is valued at roughly $600 billion annually. Using Japan as a standard, the loss is $1.3 trillion."

This from a presentation called "The Causes of Lagging Life Expectancy at Older Ages in the United States" by Samuel H. Preston of the University of Pennsylvania at the
11th Annual Joint Conference of the Retirement Research Consortium in at Washington's Press Club in August, 2009.

Preston goes on to analyze this phenomenon:

"The United States had the highest level of cigarette consumption per capita in the
developed world over a 50-year period ending in the mid-1980’s. Smoking in early life has left an imprint on mortality patterns that remains visible as heavy-smoking cohorts age.

"Life expectancy at age 50 (projected life after age 50) has been powerfully influenced by smoking in many countries. In the United States, we estimate that male life expectancy after age e50 in 2003 would be 2.8 years higher if smoking-attributable deaths were eliminated, while for females, life expectancy after age 50 would grow by 2.6 years."

Ironically, Preston also points out that:

"We find that, by standards of OECD countries, the US does well in terms of screening for cancer, survival rates from cancer, survival rates after heart attacks and strokes, and medication of individuals with high levels of blood pressure or cholesterol....among the 21 countries surveyed (not including Iceland, whose rates
are based on few observations), US survival rates ranked first in prostate cancer, breast cancer, and colorectal cancer, and second in lung cancer."

My take on this is that for years, Americans were damaging their health mainly through obesity, smoking and inactivity but we have the best medical care in the world that does a tremendous job treating cancers that may have been caused by smoking.

With smoking increasingly discouraged and unpopular over the past 30 years, it remains to be seen how the boomers who quit years ago will fair in longevity. No doubt, you will still have the unhealthy and the healthy, the educated and the uneducated and the prosperous and poor just like any other age segment of society. The bad numbers will certainly adversely affect the good numbers in longevity polls. Just something to ponder!

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