U.S. Life Expectancy Falls Behind That of Other Developed Nations. Why?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Life expectancy rates in the United States have been falling for some time even though the country has one of the highest standards of living on the planet. According to a recent column in the Financial Times, what’s really mind blowing is how those declines compare with other industrialized nations like Britain. The average American can expect to live to age 65 – a life expectancy similar to the poorest people in England. One key difference: more Americans are dying young due in part to rising opioid use, car accidents, and gun violence. We’ll talk about why Americans fare so much worse than people in other developed countries and what can be done to help more people live longer. Guests: Dr. Tony Iton, senior vice president of Healthy Communities, The California Endowment - lecturer, Health Policy & Management, UC Berkeley School of Public Health; former director, Alameda County Public Health Department John Burn-Murdoch, columnist, Financial Times Jessica Y. Ho, associate professor of Sociology and Demography, The Pennsylvania State University Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:34.7	From KQED.
0:47.6	The From KQED. From KQED. From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:51.6	After rising for decades, life expectancy in America is not going up and for many groups of
0:57.0	Americans, it's going down.
0:59.0	Viewed from outside the United States, it's quite shocking.
1:02.0	A recent Financial Times column by John Byrne Murdoch demonstrated that the average American
1:07.0	will likely live as long as a British person from the poorest, least resource
1:11.7	city in Britain. And it's not hard to see this as a sign of societal, not personal illness.
1:18.1	Something is wrong in the United States, and it's literally killing us earlier than people
1:22.2	in very similar countries. We dig into why with public health experts. That's coming up next after
1:27.2	this news.
1:27.6	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about the population health of the United States. This is a really
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