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According to a report by the Congressional Research Service (PDF hosted on Cloudflare; archived copy here),
Although life expectancy has generally been increasing over time in the United States, researchers have long documented that it is lower for individuals with lower socioeconomic status (SES) compared with individuals with higher SES. Recent studies provide evidence that this gap has widened in recent decades. For example, a 2015 study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that for men born in 1930, individuals in the highest income quintile (top 20%) could expect to live 5.1 years longer at age 50 than men in the lowest income quintile. This gap has increased significantly over time. Among men born in 1960, those in the top income quintile could expect to live 12.7 years longer than men in the bottom income quintile. This NAS study finds similar patterns for women: the life expectancy gap between the bottom and top income quintiles of women expanded from 3.9 years for the 1930 birth cohort to 13.6 years for the 1960 birth cohort.
Apparently, all the advances in medical science and healthy living that occurred during this rolling 30-year interval were visited upon the rich a lot more than on the poor.
According to a different study (open; DOI 10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.0918; archived copy here) in JAMA Internal Medicine,
[...] inequalities in life expectancy among counties are large and growing, and much of the variation in life expectancy can be explained by differences in socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors, behavioral and metabolic risk factors, and health care factors.
In 2014, there was a spread of 20.1 years between the counties with the longest and shortest typical life spans based on life expectancy at birth.
—NPR
additional coverage:
- Boston Globe (about CRS report)
- WPVI-TV (about JAMA study)
- Time (about JAMA study; Javascript required)
- WESA-FM (about JAMA study)
- The Park Record (about JAMA study)
(Score: 5, Informative) by Whoever on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:54PM (13 children)
You don't own shit. Your paymasters own it, and when they are done with you, they will dump you. You will die young because you were not able to afford proper medical care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @06:33PM (4 children)
For some reason you seem to think I'm as poor and resourceless as you. I'll be doing just fine.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:03PM (3 children)
No, I don't. I think that you poor and I know that I am not.
Let's face it, you indicated you live in a flyover state, all of which are poorer than the coastal states.
Oh, and those farms: did you look at how much of US agriculture is based in California?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:11PM
Yes, plenty. Pay attention to what's grown there. You'll definitely not have a shortage of nuts and fruits over in California, that's for sure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:14PM (1 child)
Oh, and only a Tolerant Liberal (TM) could be ignorant and hypocritical enough to prejudge people based on what state they live in. You're in great company.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday May 29 2017, @12:42AM
That's true, it is pretty ignorant to prejudge fly-over country based on regularly published statistics. I've lived here my whole life. Let me say with confidence that GP is correct!
On the other hand, I like open air target practice. I've never actually been to an indoor gun range. Never needed to.
(Having advanced infiltrator tranny capabilities helps with this, but to be honest, there's a good number of people in flyover country who aren't jackasses like you. We're just all a bunch of proud ammosexuals!)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:34PM (7 children)
Young is relative. With Kurzweil's predicted advances, it's about to get blown fat far out of proportion.
Used to be, average life expectancy was +/-10% based on wealth, today that might be moving closer to +/-20%, but with "immortality around the corner," that marginal difference could trend to infinity very quickly (the singularity, as it were.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 29 2017, @02:00AM (6 children)
WHY would you want to live forever? Stop and think about "forever" here. It would be endless, eternal hell after a few million or billion years. We are not made to be Godlike.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 29 2017, @02:55AM (4 children)
Good joke, and possibly true, though given the choice some sentience might never choose to terminate.
"Immortality" will start with lifespans of 120, 140, 200 years, and death by accident or foul play will always be there, at least until you can "backup" into a newly manufactured body ala Doctrow's Magic Kingdom story.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 29 2017, @05:29PM (3 children)
I am as serious as an ebola plague. Eternity is not "a long freaking time," it's *forever.*
Think about it this way: suppose that as a human you can appreciate and have, say, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's 100 quintillion) years of more or less unique experiences. That's it. After that, things start looping, because there's only so many possible configurations you can comprehend by virtue of BEING human. In other words, you've literally seen and done it all, and this includes all sorts of horrible torture you chose to engage in for the sole reason that it's something you hadn't experienced yet.
*You are no closer to the end of eternity than when you began.* And now you have no choice but to loop it.
Forever.
Boredom is the eternal Hell of the immortal. At some point, even if it's a number of years too big to represent in a 64-bit pointer, you will wish more than anything to die. And you won't be able to. You will be in Hell.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 29 2017, @08:14PM
Douglas Adams tangled with this a bit - the Restaurant at the end of the Universe, time travelling immortals watching every movie ever made, etc. and always being so very bored by it all.
If you take time travel out of the equation, then there's a lot to try to accomplish before the heat death of the Universe, including sustaining your consciousness into another Big Bang, if you can.
I would imagine older immortals would tend to take things more slowly... but, who knows, haven't met one yet as far as I know.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @02:33AM (1 child)
It's trivial to create new experiences. Just delete the old ones.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 31 2017, @02:53AM
This is not eternal life proper, then...this is akin to reincarnation.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday May 29 2017, @03:15AM
Why would you want to live through the rest of 2017? Or the year after that? Why not just end it now?
That option is still on the table even if aging is cured. Of course, WW3 might choose for you.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]