Comment by dnsco
2 years ago
> The gap in life expectancy between the richest 1% and poorest 1% of individuals was 14.6 years (95% CI, 14.4 to 14.8 years) for men and 10.1 years (95% CI, 9.9 to 10.3 years) for women. Second, inequality in life expectancy increased over time.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866586/#:~:tex....
But from the same paper:
> One such theory is that health and longevity are related to differences in medical care. The present analysis provides limited support for this theory. Life expectancy for low income individuals was not significantly correlated with measures of the quantity and quality of medical care provided, such as the fraction insured and measures of preventive care. The lack of a change in the mortality rates of individuals in the lowest income quartile (Figure 1) when they become eligible for Medicare coverage at the age of 65 years further supports the conclusion that a lack of access to care is not the primary reason that low-income individuals have shorter life expectancies.
There are also pretty significant differences in diet and substance use between different income quartile...
And stress. If I had to guess I would say stress matters more than both of those on average.
That being true, I do doubt that a single obituary writer falls in the poorest 1% of individuals. If I were to take a guess, I think the average salary of a journalist who writes obituaries may fall in the top 25% of income. Does the gap in life expectancy continue to be that large if we compare the top 1% and the top 25%?
Unfortunate as that is it's not at all surprising. Comparing the median with the top 1% would be more interesting. The gap there is still quite significant:
(for 40 year old men, unadjusted by race): 100th inc. prct : ~ 88 years: 75th inc. prct : ~ 84 50th inc. prct : ~ 82.5 25th inc. prct : ~ 79 5th inc. prct : ~ 76 1st inc. prct : ~ 72.5 (had to infer the values visually from charts because I wasn't to find a table including all the groups...)
However (I assume the data is very limited though) there is almost no difference in life expectancy (for men or women) when your household income is above >$200k (back in 2014, so probably quite a bit higher now). So I don't think there are any efficient treatments available only for the ultra-rich, just being rich or upper-middle class should be enough to get access the best(ish) treatment there is.
For the bottom income quartile when comparing local areas: the % of people with not insurance, medicare spending per enrolled person and 30-day hospital mortality rate seem to have the highest correlation with life expectancy. Which all should be trivial to fix for a relatively extremely-rich country like the US...
Looking at the appendices one interesting point I noticed (assuming I understood it correctly) is that people at the 50th percentile are more likely to reach 77 years than those in the top 75th or 100th prcts. But after that point income seems to matter a whole lot more.
Another seemingly very weird correlation (page 43): higher inequality in local area seems to be correlated with lower life expectancy for all income quartiles except the bottom one (so basically poorer people tend to liver longer in high inequality areas even though the difference in years is not very big).
That's a very interesting study. I'm surprised the relationship is so linear through all the way through the income percentiles, aside from the very bottom few. I would have expected a relative plateau in the middle.
I really doubt a writer for the NYT is going to be in the bottom 1% of income or wealth.
Having bad health is a hell of a way to waste the time you could have wasted on making money instead.