Low life expectancy has become a serious problem for the United States

the life expectancy, i.e. the average age that people reach in a country, is usually one of the best indicators of development and quality of life in the world. It only makes sense that in places where people die younger, there is an association with a lower quality of life.

That is why it is remarkable that the main economy of the planet does not score well on this indicator. According to a new study published in the scientific journal American Journal of Public Healthlife expectancy for the United States through 2021 (the latest date for which data can be verified) is 76.1 years old And the? 56 countries In the world the life expectancy is better than in this country. Some of these countries, even if they are very small places and are much poorer or in turmoil than the United States, like Lebanon also Albanian.

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The study indicates a high cost MedicineQuality meallevels pressure and access to arms All may be contributing factors to younger people dying in the United States than in other parts of the world.

The scale of the problem is much greater than we thought. It’s an older issue than we thought, and the number of countries doing better than the United States in this regard is much higher than we thought.” Stephen Wolfstudy author and director emeritus of the Center for Community and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

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But the most curious thing about the study is the understanding that this is a problem the United States has been facing for longer than originally thought. As was the case in most parts of the world, at the beginning of the twentieth century, towards the 1920s, the United States experienced a significant increase in life expectancy thanks to advances in science and health conditions. Until the 1950s, the index continued to grow, to the point that in 1950 it was the 12th country in the world with the highest life expectancy. But after 1955, life expectancy stopped growing, so much so that by 1968, the United States had fallen to 29th in the world rankings.

“When people were asking us about the origin of this problem, we were talking about the 1980s. But I think it was because we didn’t dig into the historical data to understand what happened before. The drop in the 1950s opens up questions about what happened in that time.

According to the study, life expectancy began to grow in 1974, but the increase slowed down around 1983. Since then, the new phenomenon has appeared again with COVID-19, leading to a decline in life expectancy for the first time in decades.

The researchers concluded that life expectancy has more to do with a systemic problem than with the personal decisions that are in our hands to control.

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