Tag: socioeconomic factors

Work Longer, Die Sooner! America’s Dire Need to Expand Social Security and Medicare

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/work-longer-die-sooner-americas-dire-need-to-expand-social-security-and-medicare

Excerpt:

Are we all really living longer? Let’s first point out that Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, noted for their research in health and economics, recently showed that many Americans are not, in fact, enjoying extended lives. As they stated in their own New York Times op-ed, those without college degrees are “scarred by death and a staggeringly shorter life span.” According to their investigation, the expected lifespan for this group has been falling since 2010. By 2021, people without college degrees were expected to live to about 75, nearly 8.5 years shorter than their college-educated counterparts.

Overall life expectancy in America dropped in 2020 and 2021, with increases in mortality across the leading causes of death and among all ages, not just due to COVID-19. In August 2022, data confirmed that Americans are dying younger across all demographics. Again, the U.S. is an outlier. It was one of two developed countries where life expectancy did not bounce back in the second year of the pandemic.

So the argument that everyone is living longer greatly stretches the truth—unless, of course, you happen to be rich: A Harvard study revealed that the wealthiest Americans enjoy a life expectancy over a decade longer than their poorest counterparts.

Could the idea that working into our seventies and beyond boosts our health and well-being hold true? Obviously, for those in physically demanding roles, such as construction or mining, prolonged work is likely to lead to a higher risk of injury, accidents, and wearing down health-wise. But what about everybody else? What if you have a desk job? Wouldn’t it be great to get out there, do something meaningful, and interact with people, too?

Perhaps it’s easy for people like Steuerle and Kramon to imagine older people working in secure, dignified positions that might offer health benefits into old age – after all, those are the types of positions they know best.

But the reality is different. Economist Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School for Social Research, focuses on the economic security of older workers and flaws in U.S. retirement systems in her new book, Work, Retire, Repeat: The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy. She calls those praising the health perks of working longer “oddballs” – those fortunate folks in cushy positions who have a lot of autonomy and purpose. Like lawmakers or tenured professors, for example.

Author(s): Lynn Parramore

Publication Date: 8 May 2024

Publication Site: Institute for New Economic Thinking

How disadvantage became deadly in America

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.ft.com/content/6d8bad29-3147-44a2-bc61-70f8ceff6c6f?accessToken=zwAGB5lW9184kc9ti60pMUdEotO8YXD4zv9sbw.MEUCIBrMWnKTNAovwoanjaXAlP0CCkAObuApixHcx7P0kp59AiEA9jdxWJNbfckzoDKgEmmH7uFUtPa-vSeZlmAr7O6ilxc&sharetype=gift&token=d188b24b-de79-4e0e-b16a-9b22a4e17e42

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Much has been made of America’s life expectancy deficit, but focusing on a statistic which is an average for the whole population masks truly staggering disparities at the extremes. For men at the bottom of the US economic ladder, it’s even worse. My calculations suggest the average age of death in that group is just 36 years old, compared with 55 in the Netherlands and 57 in Sweden.

….

In most wealthy countries, if you’re desperately unlucky in the longevity stakes, you succumb to cancer before you reach 60. But if you’re unlucky in the US, you die from a drug overdose or gunshot wound by 40. Which brings us again to the most shocking statistic: among the least fortunate 10 per cent of American men, the average age at death is 36.

Looking at different regions within the US paints a similar picture. Conditions such as obesity shorten the lives of rich and poor alike, but the most uniquely American afflictions have steep socio-economic gradients. Wealthy Americans who live in the parts of the country with high opioid use and gun violence live just as long as those who live where fentanyl addiction and gunshot incidents are relatively rare. But poor Americans live far shorter lives if they grow up surrounded by guns and drugs than if they don’t.

Author(s): JOHN BURN-MURDOCH

Publication Date: 13 October 2023

Publication Site: Financial Times

Without a College Degree, Life in America Is Staggeringly Shorter

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/opinion/life-expectancy-college-degree.html

Excerpt:

In the 1970s, American life expectancy grew by about four months each year. By the 1980s, it was similar to life expectancy in other rich countries. Since then, other countries have continued to progress, with life spans increasing by more than two and a half months a year.

But the United States has slowly, gradually and then precipitously fallen behind.

These ever-widening gaps have long troubled demographers and prompted three reports from the National Academy of Sciences. The gaps grew wider during the pandemic.

But even before, not only was life expectancy in the United States far from that of the best-performing countries (Japan and Switzerland), but it was also more than two years lower than that of the worst performers (Germany and Britain) among 22 other rich countries.

Public health authorities in the United States record educational qualifications at death so that, after 1992, we can calculate life expectancy by college degree, starting at age 25, when most people have completed their education. In new research using these individual death records, we have found startling results.

Life expectancy at age 25 (adult life expectancy) for those with four-year college degrees rose to 59 years on the eve of the pandemic — so an average individual would live to 84 — up from 54 years (or 79 years old) in 1992. During the pandemic, by 2021, the expectation slipped a year.

But we were staggered to discover that for those without college degrees, life expectancy reached its peak around 2010 and has been falling since, an unfolding disaster that has attracted little attention in the media or among elected officials.

Adult life expectancy for this group started out two and a half years lower, at 51.6, in 1992 — so an average individual would live to nearly 77 years old. But by 2021, it was 49.8 years (or almost 75 years old), roughly eight and a half years less than people with college degrees, and those without had lost 3.3 years during the pandemic.

The divergence of life expectancies on either side of the college divide — one going up, one going down — is both shocking and rare. We have found reference to only one other case in modern history, in the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Like those countries, the United States is failing its less-educated people, an awful condemnation of where the country is today.

Author(s): Anne Case, Angus Deaton

Publication Date:

Publication Site:

Social and Other Determinants of Life Insurance Demand

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.soa.org/resources/research-reports/2022/determinants-life-insurance/

Report: https://www.soa.org/4a50aa/globalassets/assets/files/resources/research-report/2022/determinants-life-insurance.pdf

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The authors examine 19 factors to determine which were most closely linked to permanent and term life insurance premiums sold in the United States in 2020. With spatial regression analysis using multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) approach, the authors find the following 5 covariates to be the most statistically significant for and positively correlated with permanent insurance sold: household income, percentage of the population that is African American, education, health insurance, and Gini index (a statistical measure of wealth inequality). For term insurance sold, the 5 most significant covariates are household income, education, Gini index, percentage of households with no vehicles, and health insurance. Their relationships with term insurance sold are positive except for the percentage of households with no vehicles.

Author(s):

Wilmer Martinez
Kyran Cupido
Petar Jevtic
Jianxi Su

Publication Date: August 2022

Publication Site: SOA

‘There’s a dividing line’ — Vaccination rates trace socioeconomic boundaries in CT

Mary Pat Campbell
‘There’s a dividing line’ — Vaccination rates trace socioeconomic boundaries in CT

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “social vulnerability index” has formed the basis for the state’s prioritization system and has been a reliable indicator of low vaccine uptake. Generally speaking, the higher a community’s SVI score, the lower its vaccination rate, a CT Mirror analysis found.

An estimated 32% of the state’s eligible population lives in the state’s priority ZIP codes, and the state aims to administer the same percentage of vaccines within those communities. While the state inches closer to that goal each week, the statewide slowdown in the number of shots administered means that it has a lot of ground to make up. Of all the vaccines administered so far, just 25% of all vaccines distributed as of last week have gone to residents of those ZIP codes.

“Progress is slower now,” said Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, at a recent press conference.

Of the 15 different variables that determine a Census tract’s vulnerability score, a CT Mirror analysis found that socioeconomic factors considered by the index — namely income, employment status, poverty level and education — were found to be most predictive of vaccination rates. This is consistent with a national study on the county level that the CDC released in March.

Author(s): KASTURI PANANJADY, DAVE ALTIMARI

Publication Date: 3 June 2021

Publication Site: CT Mirror