Our Director Professor Jane Falkingham CBE was a guest on #BBC Talking #Business discussing the challenges of an #ageing #population (from 05:05).

The global #lifeexpectancy has doubled in just over 100 years. That's a great achievement and unlocks opportunities for a growing #generation of #consumers and #workers, many of them #grandparents and great-grandparents. But it comes with challenges... How to pay for the #health and #welfare needs of this ageing population?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001q54l

The US has seen growth in relative age-specific mortality gaps from infancy through midlife and exhibits greater concentrations of deaths from infancy through adulthood, resulting in much greater mortality variability. Further reductions in early and midlife mortality could diminish variability, reduce years of potential life lost, and increase life expectancy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32943979

@uncpopcenter #NICHDImpact #Mortality #LifeExpectancy

#USA #LifeExpectancy #Health:"Life insurance actuaries are reporting that many more people are dying – still – than in the years before the pandemic. And while deaths during COVID-19 had largely occurred among the old and infirm, this new wave is hitting prime-of-life people hard.

No one knows precisely what is driving the phenomenon, but there is an inexplicable lack of urgency to find out. A concerted investigation is in order.

Deaths among young Americans documented in employee life insurance claims should alone set off alarms. Among working people 35 to 44 years old, a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022, with above-average rates in other working-age groups, too.

“COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase,” a Society of Actuaries report says."

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/08/11/more-americans-dying-than-before-pandemic-covid-deaths/70542423007/

New evidence of large health care inequality across the USA: Wide variation among states in life expectancy and disability free years documented. The South is doubly disadvantaged: residents have shorter lives and spend a greater proportion of those lives with disability. Among women, disability free years ranged from 45.8 years in West Virginia to 52.5 years in Hawaii, a 6.7-year gap.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33600246/

#NICHDImpact #LifeExpectancy #Disability #Healthcare #HealthcareInequality

People with normal weight at age 31 who gradually become overweight in middle or later adulthood have the lowest mortality risk.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33493649

#NICHDImpact #Obesity #Mortality #Health #LifeExpectancy

'The UK has one of the lowest life expectancies among rich countries. But why?'

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/07/06/uk-has-one-of-the-lowest-life-expectancies-among-rich-countries-why

'It found that a decline in the country's national healthcare service (NHS) - which authors wrote "has seen better days" - is to blame.'

#NHS #Health #LifeExpectancy #UK

A damning report has offered an explanation behind why the UK has one of the lowest life expectancies among rich nations.

It found that a decline in the country's national healthcare service (NHS) - which authors wrote "has seen better days" - is to blame.

The report, published by charity The King’s Fund, compared the UK to 18 other major economies, finding its healthcare system "underperforming significantly" in several aspects.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/07/06/uk-has-one-of-the-lowest-life-expectancies-among-rich-countries-why

#UK #LifeExpectancy #NHS #HealthCare

#GDP #EconomicGrowth #QualityOfLife #USA #LifeExpectancy: "None of this is to say that GDP doesn’t matter. It represents the size of pie, which helps to determine what a country can do in the world, as well as the kind of life it can provide for its people. Unsurprisingly, then, GDP per head and life expectancy tend to roughly correlate, but there are plenty of exceptions from which lessons can be learnt. Some countries punch above their economic weight when it comes to life expectancy, such as Spain, Italy and Japan with their healthy diets. The US, with its guns, processed foods and poor safety net, punches well below.

People who care about health and want to influence policymakers or the public often try to highlight the impact it has on the economy. “Poor health reduces global GDP by 15 per cent each year,” one McKinsey study(opens a new window) claims. “Endemic ill-health in England’s “left behind” neighbourhoods costs the country almost £30bn a year because people are often too ill to work and die earlier” another report suggests(opens a new window). But this is to get things precisely backwards. We don’t want to live long and healthy lives so we can generate GDP, we want GDP so we can live long and healthy lives."

https://www.ft.com/content/13c66ea6-df56-4bb1-8b53-c45a7a94429d

Diabetes is a significant threat to US life expectancy and health, particularly for people ages 50+ born or living in the South.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32855262

#NICHDImpact #Diabetes #Disability #LifeExpectancy #Health

There's also the fatalism inculcated in people by certain kinds of religion which tell people to wait for heaven to solve their problems and tells women to submit to men. Potts writes incisively and repeatedly about this.

There are prescriptions galore in Potts' analysis. It's surprising that Grose does not see them.

#women #economics #education #LifeExpectancy
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As Potts points out, this is a problem quite specific to Republican-voting, right-wing areas of the country dominated by white evangelical culture. It's compounded by lack of sound education (something the Republican party does almost nothing to address), lack of good jobs (something the Republican party ditto), and deep racism that diverts attention from the real system problems immiserating young white women in these parts of the country.

#women #economics #education #LifeExpectancy
/3

"An excellent new book by Monica Potts, 'The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America,' humanizes these bleak statistics."

#women #economics #education #LifeExpectancy
/2

"While white, Hispanic and Asian American women still outlive their Black and Native American counterparts, overall, the mortality trends appear to be going in the wrong direction most starkly for non-college-educated white women. In 2012, The Times reported, researchers found that 'the steepest declines' in life expectancy 'were for white women without a high school diploma'.”

~ Jessica Grose

#women #economics #education #LifeExpectancy
/1

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/10/opinion/forgotten-girls-women.html

Would the elimination of obesity & smoking reduce US racial/ethnic/nativity disparities in total and healthy life expectancy? This research provides clues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30891487

#NICHDImpact #Obesity #Smoking #LifeExpectancy #RacialDisparities #Health #HealthDisparities

"80 is different in 2023 than in 1776 – but even back then, a grizzled Franklin led alongside a young Hamilton"

#Ageism #Health #History #President #US #LifeExpectancy #Biden #Trump #Democrats #GOP #Republicans

https://theconversation.com/80-is-different-in-2023-than-in-1776-but-even-back-then-a-grizzled-franklin-led-alongside-a-young-hamilton-202812

Thread about statistics on life expectancy in red vs blue states (USA)

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1648332153904680961.html

#Lifeexpectancy #OBGYN #Redstates

From 2018-20, life expectancy in the US decreased by 1.87 years (to 76.87 years), 8.5 times the average decrease in peer countries (0.22 years), widening the gap to 4.69 years. Life expectancy in the US decreased disproportionately among racial/ethnic minority groups from 2018-20, declining by 3.88, 3.25, & 1.36 years in Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, & non-Hispanic white populations, respectively.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34162598

#NICHDImpact #COVID19 #RacialDisparities #LifeExpectancy

Life expectancy: Where in Europe do people live the shortest and the longest?

Life expectancy estimates are a critical tool to keep track of society's well-being, but for policymakers, the trends are also fundamental.

France, for example, is grappling with the challenge of a longer-living population and the resulting strain on the pension system.

Across the EU, the life expectancy metric has been on an upward trajectory for several decades.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/04/15/life-expectancy-where-in-europe-do-people-live-the-shortest-and-the-longest

#Europe #LifeExpectancy

Life expectancy revealed in the seaside towns where Chris Whitty fears health is being ‘left behind’ - inews https://apple.news/Al0g9a4rHQdyd0yjY5DZ_fw #uk #Lifeexpectancy #ukseasidetowns

Mainly due to physically strenuous jobs, U.S. Latinos live significantly longer than non-Latino whites, but spend more years disabled.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33730061

#NICHDImpact #Disability #LifeExpectancy #Mortality #HealthDisparities