The American lifespan declined slightly in 2015, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report based primarily on 2015 death certificates:
Life expectancy in the United States has declined for the first time in more than two decades. Data from the National Center for Health Statistics showed a drop for men from 76.5 years in 2014 to 76.3 in 2015, and from 81.3 to 81.2 for women. The preliminary figures show rises in several causes of death, especially heart disease, dementia and accidental infant deaths.
Life expectancy last fell during the peak of the HIV/Aids crisis in 1993. It has improved slightly but steadily in most of the years since World War Two, rising from a little more than 68 years in 1950. It also fell in 1980, after a severe outbreak of flu. Overall life expectancy for men and women is now 78.8 years, a decrease of 0.1 year from 2014.
[...] The death rate for cancer has gone down 1.7%, which is significant as cancer is the second-biggest cause of death, causing almost as many fatalities as heart disease. But it seems that fast-developing research into cancer treatments, as well as campaigns on public education and early detection, are having an impact.
But do they account for the effect of fake deaths?
Mortality in the United States, 2015 (PDF)
An anonymous coward sent in an article from The Atlantic covering the same news.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:35AM
Ongoing war, lingering unemployment, and now Trump! Kill yourself before America gets worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @02:44PM
Sounds good, thanks!
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Saturday December 10 2016, @05:49PM
It's that and more.
Americans don't get vacation time and sick leave, if they do get those benefits, then there's a ton of pressure not to use them for fear of being laid off. The food supply has been compromised and is getting worse and worse. Most of the "food" items you find in the grocery store include so many ingredients that you can't reasonable be expected to understand what you're eating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:14PM
so many ingredients that you can't reasonable be expected to understand
I see a movie: "Francis and the Unreasonable Expectations of Everyday Life." Cannes in the future!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:23PM
Those expectations are only unreasonable in the US...and the 3rd world...
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:30PM
Precisely. Those are some pretty modest expectations to have. And there's no reason why we can't have them. But, to hear the investor class whining about it, you'd think that they were going to go out of business. And that might be true for a small number of small businesses, but those small businesses are already on the cusp of going out of business anyways. There's a substantial cost associated with having employees come to work sick or under-rested that generally gets ignored.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:48PM
And that might be true for a small number of small businesses, but those small businesses are already on the cusp of going out of business anyways.
We didn't need those jobs anyway.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:02PM
I wouldn't summarize it like that. In a healthy economy, that work tends to find its way over to another company. It's mostly cases where the work isn't productive or the economy isn't doing well that that's an issue.
We could easily have 100% employment if we went back to slavery as well, but I don't think that any reasonable person would suggest that as a solution. The investors need to just accept that rather than being obscenely wealthy, they'll just be quite wealthy. At some point the situation will correct itself, the question is whether that will be peaceful or whether the next American Revolution involves us dusting off the Guillotine.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 11 2016, @07:52AM
I wouldn't summarize it like that.
But I would and I did. This is a common problem. Activities that are inconvenient to the narrative get grossly devalued.
But here's the problem with your attitude. Where are all the wonderful jobs going to come from when you keep destroying jobs like this? In analogy, we have a two story house where I want to move up to the second floor. Should I destroy the first floor because I don't want to live there any more? Wouldn't that cause a problem with the structural integrity of the second floor which now rests on a 10 foot air gap?
Labor-wise where are all the skilled workers going to come from when you don't have the starter jobs any more? What happens when someone loses a job and can't quickly pick up a low paying job while they look for new work? If you keep destroying businesses because they are "marginal" and thus something you don't want any more, what happens when more and more businesses become marginal?
There is a huge potential here for a slow decay of society as growing pieces of the society get marginalized and become something we didn't "need" anyway.
For all my posting, I never say that we should take out marginal businesses. Sure, if there's a recession and the business goes belly-up, fine, it's evolution in action. But to destroy a healthy business in a healthy economy and then dismiss the whole thing as something that would have happened anyway (even though that is wrong), is reprehensible.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 10 2016, @10:42PM
Americans don't get vacation time and sick leave
Except when they do.
if they do get those benefits, then there's a ton of pressure not to use them for fear of being laid off.
You just said they didn't. And I think a big part of the problem is the stories. We have to do or not do things because stories. All these people have trouble in the stories, they always do. So we need to do things so that we will feel better about the people in the stories.
I'm more of an evidence guy myself and like to do things because there's a reason to do them. Sure, I understand how story-driven people think. I just don't respect them.
The food supply has been compromised and is getting worse and worse.
Compared to what? Certainly not the past.
Most of the "food" items you find in the grocery store include so many ingredients that you can't reasonable be expected to understand what you're eating.
Hasn't been a problem for me. But maybe I'm just not eating the right foods? Then again, who really has looked at the ingredients of a banana, a steak, or a piece of cabbage? Organisms are notorious for being a mishmash of scary compounds.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:16PM
Sigh, this again. Another post by you where you make up elaborate stories trying to prove a point and only succeed in making yourself look foolish.
You don't need to look up the ingredients in bananas, steaks, cabbage and things of that nature, just eat a reasonable variety of it and you probably never have to worry about vitamin deficiency. That's what our ancestors did. Now, compare that with the "foods," and I do use the word loosely, that show up in the grocery store. They're heavily processed to remove nutritional content not considered important. There's tons of fat, protein, sugar, salt and other things that make it taste good, but leave out a lot of the other stuff like the vitamins and minerals that are also extremely important.
As far as the food supply, up until recently, the only things you had to worry about were food poisoning and getting enough. But, now we've got poor people that are fat. How on earth, do you explain that other than by the food being compromised?
As far as the vacation and sick time goes, you do realize that there are more than 2 people in the US, right? Some people don't get paid sick time and vacation and they're a large part of why the life expectancy is going down. But, you also have people who technically have leave, but can't use it because they are afraid of losing their job when the layoffs come or not getting their promotion. I'm not really sure how you could think that everybody's benefits package is the same. But, because there is no legally guaranteed leave time, a large number of people either don't get it or can't take it. Compare that with most of Europe where it's a right and you do get to take it, that's embarrassing. There's no reason for us to not do it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 11 2016, @07:35AM
Another post by you where you make up elaborate stories trying to prove a point and only succeed in making yourself look foolish.
Funny how you were the one doing that with your imaginary tales of how all Americans don't get days off, and are afraid to take those days off because they'll get fired. I guess we really do need to monkey with the food supply then.
Now, compare that with the "foods," and I do use the word loosely, that show up in the grocery store.
Bananas, steak, and cabbage shows up in grocery stores too. And you'll find that these foods have more weird junk in them than many processed foods do (which often tend to be some simple combination of a few basic low cost, calorie-dense ingredients and a few chemically pure seasonings).
As far as the food supply, up until recently, the only things you had to worry about were food poisoning and getting enough. But, now we've got poor people that are fat. How on earth, do you explain that other than by the food being compromised?
How about a combination of genetics, eating too much, and not exercising enough?
As far as the vacation and sick time goes, you do realize that there are more than 2 people in the US, right? Some people don't get paid sick time and vacation and they're a large part of why the life expectancy is going down. But, you also have people who technically have leave, but can't use it because they are afraid of losing their job when the layoffs come or not getting their promotion. I'm not really sure how you could think that everybody's benefits package is the same. But, because there is no legally guaranteed leave time, a large number of people either don't get it or can't take it. Compare that with most of Europe where it's a right and you do get to take it, that's embarrassing. There's no reason for us to not do it.
Ok, now it's just a few people with this problem. Here's my take on this. We don't need this supposed right. People with this problem already have adequate remedies, up to and including moving on to another job or asking their employer for some time off. Why should I have government regulations nanny people when people can defend themselves? It's just another silly social justice thing.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Monday December 12 2016, @03:10PM
Its not a silly social justice thing. The evidence, which you said you respect, says that vacation and sick leave help people lead healthier, happier, more productive lives.
Do you actually respect the evidence?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 12 2016, @06:32PM
The evidence, which you said you respect, says that vacation and sick leave help people lead healthier, happier, more productive lives.
Evidence also "says" that people on vacation and sick leave, aren't working, which is a huge unproductive aspect which you just happen to not mention. To claim that the result is a net benefit requires subjective assertions about what is more valuable. And ultimately, you ignore that people choose to work jobs with low vacation and sick leave allowances. I doubt it is because they want to be less healthy and happy.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Wednesday December 14 2016, @01:48PM
I think, if you measure the annual productivity of a person with sick leave and vacation versus the person without, that you would find the person who has and uses those benefits is more productive. Unfortunately, I don't have a citation handy for that so maybe I have mis-interpreted some research that I have read.
Secondly, I know that when I worked a job that did not provide those benefits, it wasn't a choice. I chose to get those benefits as soon as I possibly could, but the folks offering me my first few jobs simply did not offer those benefits. So you saying that people are choosing to work those jobs implies that they have better choices - anecdotally, I did not when I was in that situation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 14 2016, @04:01PM
I chose to get those benefits as soon as I possibly could
Exactly.
(Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:05AM
America should look to the Federalist papers for inspiration, including it's warnings on populism by Hamilton. It also needs to become more ethical before it can be great again.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:20AM
Uh, no. See, you're confused. America needs to become less ethical to be great again. Bring back Black slavery, genocide the Indian reservations, abolish Social Security, cancel all Emergency medical care, these are the ways to restore American greatness. Oh, and lynchings. Lots and lots of lynchings.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Saturday December 10 2016, @05:51PM
So, which party do I vote for to get that? You've got the party of corporatists that rigged their own primary to nominate a woman. And you have the party of corporatists that was unable to come up with enough support for serious candidates that were more serious and studied.
Both parties are an embarrassment on the factors that are leading to this drop in life expectancy.
They do differ a little bit, but mostly on issues that aren't terribly important to most people.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday December 11 2016, @04:54AM
America should look to the Federalist papers for inspiration, including it's warnings on populism by Hamilton.
I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing, but what does that have to do with TFA and life expectancy declines?
In fact, if life expectancy continues to decline, that will eventually lower population, which might be the only way to get back to the representational scaling intended by the Founders. :)
(For those who aren't familiar with what I'm talking about, the Founders were skeptical of populism, but they ALSO intended to ensure the aggregated voices of individuals were heard DIRECTLY by their representatives. That just isn't possible with the modern scale of Congress, given our population.
The average US representative in 1789 represented about 30,000 people. The Founders intended to keep that ratio below 50,000 [wikipedia.org]. Now, a US Congress member represents about 700,000 people. And, frankly, most of the Founders really only imagined the representatives in 1789 would be representing white, male landowners, which would be a much smaller subset, close to an order of magnitude lower (fewer in Southern states, more in Northern states, due to slavery effects in apportionment). Anyhow, a US Congressman in 1789 was basically supposed to express the wishes of probably somewhere around 5000 voters -- not small enough that they could necessary know everyone, but certainly feasible that they could have personal contact with significant subset of them.
To get a similar representation of voter views in 2016, we'd likely need a House of Representatives with ~50,000 representatives... obviously unwieldy. So, if you really want to go back to the world of the Founders, you either need to build another layer of representing the representatives or something... or you'd need a massive die-off in the population.)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @11:26AM
This seems to be due to a rise in medical care use which has lead to a rise in "poisonings", primarily under/overdoses of painkillers and blood pressure meds. This would be killing vulnerable people off before they die of cancer, etc, so you get the seeming paradox. It sucks that now it is being claimed that heart disease is still increasing though, so most of those meds are probably not doing much.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/factsheets/factsheet_drug_poisoning.htm [cdc.gov]