>From today's AlterNet Newsletter. I find the last paragraph interesting --
>the idea that ill health and diminishing life expectancy are at least partly
>the result of the poor feeling they are sinking into an increasingly hopeless
>situation. Might life expectancy be related to how good and useful you feel?
Ed
Shocker Stat: Life Expectancy Decreases by 4 Years Among Poor Whites in U.S.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported on an alarming new study: researchers
have documented that the least educated white Americans are experiencing sharp
declines in life expectancy. Between 1990 and 2008, white women without a high
school diploma lost a full five years of their lives, while their male
counterparts lost three years. Experts say that declines in life expectancy in
developed countries are exceedingly rare, and that in the U.S., decreases on
this scale "have not been seen in the U.S. since the Spanish influenza epidemic
of 1918." Even during the Great Depression, which wrought economic devastation
and severe psychic trauma for millions of Americans, average life expectancy
was on the increase.
What are the reasons for the disturbing drop in life expectancy among poor
white folks, and in particular for the unusually large magnitude of the
decline? According to the Times, researchers are baffled: one expert said,
"There's this enormous issue of why . . . It's very puzzling and we don't have
a great explanation." Undoubtedly, the increasing numbers of low-income
Americans without health insurance is a major contributor factor. Researchers
also say that lifestyle factors such as smoking, which has increased among
low-income white women, play a role; poor folks tend to engage in more risky
health behaviors than their more affluent counterparts.
I will offer an alternative hypothesis, one which is not explicitly identified
in the Times article: inequality. In the U.S., the period between 1990 and
2008, which is a period that saw such steep declines in life expectancy for the
least well-off white people, is also a period during which economic inequality
soared. Moreover, there is a compelling body of research that suggests that
inequality itself -- quite apart from low incomes, or lack of health insurance
-- is associated with more negative health outcomes for those at the bottom of
the heap. One of the most famous series of studies of the social determinants
of health, Britain's Whitehall Studies, had as their subjects British civil
servants, all of whom health insurance and (presumably) decent enough jobs.
Intriguingly, these studies
found a strong association between grade levels of civil servant employment
and mortality rates from a range of causes. Men in the lowest grade
(messengers, doorkeepers, etc.) had a mortality rate three times higher than
that of men in the highest grade (administrators).
The Whitehall studies found that while workers in the lower grades were more
likely to be at risk for coronary heart disease due to factors such as higher
rates of smoking, higher blood pressure, etc., even after controlling for those
confounding factors, these workers still experienced significantly higher
mortality rates. So what was behind such disparate health incomes among
high-status and low-status workers? Researchers pointed the finger at
inequality, hypothesizing that various psychosocial factors associated with
inequality - such as the higher levels of stress at work and at home
experienced by the lower tier workers, as well as their lower levels of
self-esteem - were behind the dramatic differences in mortality rates.
I believe that inequality-related stressors are likely to be the determining
factors in declining American life expectancies, as well. I'm surprised, in
fact, that the Times article did not specifically identify inequality as a
causal factor, because the health risks associated with economic inequality are
well-established in the scientific literature. For decades, the United States
has been making a series of political choices that has distributed wealth and
power upwards and left working Americans not only poorer and sicker, but also
feeling far more burdened and distressed, and experiencing far less security
and control over their lives. The consequences of these choices have been
devastating, and absent a dramatic reversal in our political course, they are
likely to get even worse. Where inequality is concerned, Republicans have their
foot on the accelerator, while the best the Democrats seem to be able to do is
to (temporarily) put their foot on the brake.
We are on a trajectory all right, and it's not a good one.
The Washington Monthly / By Kathleen Geier | Sourced from
Washington Monthly
Posted at September 22, 2012, 8:27am
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