What the Numbers Really Tell Us About Living Longer in Retirement
▻https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/903969
[...] overall, the study [1] found that Americans are faring worse in a wide range of measures, including infant mortality and low birth weight, injuries and homicides, drug-related deaths, obesity and diabetes, heart disease and chronic lung disease. Many of the conditions sharply reduce the odds of reaching age 50 - and for those who do, the conditions contribute to poorer health and greater illness later in life, the report found.
“If health were an Olympic event, we have been getting beat by lots of other nations,” said Stephen Bezruchka, a professor at the School of Public Health of the University of Washington in Seattle.
The poor performance does not stem only from problems with access to healthcare, he notes. “We tend to confuse health and healthcare,” he said, adding that research shows that medical care accounts for no more than 15 percent of the mortality gap between the United States and other rich countries.
Epidemiologists have documented that societies with less economic equality have worse than average health. Some of this stems from the inability of lower-income households to meet basic needs such as adequate nutrition and shelter. But at the high end of wealth, Bezruchka notes, there is a diminishing-return effect - money can purchase only so much health.
“Those with more income do have lower mortality, but you get a greater return on average health by taking a little from the rich and giving it to the poorer person.”
#santé #inégalités #états-unis
[1] rapport annuel de la Society of Actuaries (SOA): "mortality improvement scale”