[extropy-chat] Health data

[Damien Sullivan]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 01:01:15AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> > Anyway, I believe that even if you compare white Americans to white
> > Europeans or Canadians we still die sooner while spending twice as
> > much money.
> 
> Well :-)  so far, you have your hunches and I have mine.

Not a hunch but a memory of data.  Also, if black women are within six
months of white women, then white women will be close to the stat for
women overall and we could compare that across countries.

Okay, real data:

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

Japan:     84.70 F  77.96 M  81.25 total  6.74 F-M diff  3.24 infant mort
Sweden:    82.87 F  78.29 M  80.51 total  4.58           2.76
Australia: 83.52 F  77.64 M  80.50 total  5.88           4.63
Canada:    83.74 F  76.86 M  80.22 total  6.88           4.69
Italy:     82.94 F  76.88 M  79.81 total  6.06           5.83
France:    83.54 F  76.10 M  79.73 total  7.44           4.21
Norway:    82.31 F  76.91 M  79.54 total  5.40           3.67
Dutch:     81.67 F  76.39 M  78.96 total  5.28           4.96
Germany:   81.96 F  75.81 M  78.80 total  6.15           4.12
UK:        81.13 F  76.09 M  78.54 total  5.04           5.08
EU:        81.6  F  75.1  M  78.3  total  6.5            5.1
US:        80.82 F  75.02 M  77.85 total  5.80           6.43

We're at the bottom, and just looking at whites doesn't improve that (see
below).  There's a wider range for females than males, and interesting
variation in the F-M difference.  If you're male, you want to be
Swedish (and moving to Britain might have cut Anders's life expectancy.
:)  Countries notionally similar to us such as Australia and Canada kick
our butt.  Lifestyle/diet might explain some things like Japan vs.
Germany, or Italy's high rank despite high infant mortality; OTOH, the
US looks bad on infant mortality rates as well, and the differences can
be even larger.  

So, tell me again how socialized medicine doesn't work.  Seems to work
as well or better than ours for half as much money.

http://www.jointcenter.org/DB/factsheet/lifexpec.htm
"Black men remain the group with the lowest life expectancy. Those born
in 1999 are expected to live to the age of 67.8, which is about 7 years
less than for comparable white men (74.6). Among women born in 1999,
blacks are expected to live to the age of 74.7, and whites to age 79.9"

So my memory of a 6 month deficit for black women was wrong, but whites
are still close to the official numbers.  Remember blacks are only about
14% of the population, so the numbers above would give a 1999 US female
LE of 79.17, pretty close to the white female figure of 79.9.  US males
would be 73.65.

So if you want, you can add a year to the US numbers, moving white
Americans up to the level of Germany and UK.  Hurrah, ethnically
privileged Americans live as long as the bottom rung of socialized
medicine countries, while spending twice as much.

http://www.childtrendsdatabank.org/indicators/78LifeExpectancy.cfm

This is more recent (2003, not 1999).  78 years for white total, 77.5
for US total.  Just half a year difference, so we wouldn't rise even to
UK levels.  Infant mortality makes a large part of the white/black
difference, though US whites would still compare quite unfavorably (x2)
with Sweden or Japan in that statistic (which should be rather less
sensitive to lifestyle and diet factors!)

-xx- Damien X-)