Time for perhaps the most damning stat of all:
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 31, 2023
One in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday.
No parent should ever have to bury their child, but on average across the US one set of parents from every kindergarten class most likely will. pic.twitter.com/vY8QToGXsr
This has an outsized impact on life exp because deaths at early ages erase far more life than even a large number of older folks dying slightly early.
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 31, 2023
More years of American lives were erased by drugs, guns & road deaths in 2021 alone than from Covid during the whole pandemic.
So we have a steady climb in “deaths of despair” and other violent/external deaths, plus the heavy toll exacted by very high rates of diet-related disease (cardiovascular diseases etc).
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) March 31, 2023
Why is the US so badly afflicted?
“Deaths of Despair,” identified by Ann Case and Angus Deaton in 2015 as afflicting the middle-aged white working class, should be distinguished from the current post–George Floyd surge in “Deaths of Exuberance” (homicides and car crashes) afflicting, especially, young blacks & Latinos.
But even this guy at the hard-headed Financial Times, who has put together an excellent set of charts, seems to have never heard of the Floyd Effect.
