TheNational Academy of Scienceshas released a new report on the life expectancy of residents of the richest countries in the world. The research group responsible for the findings were tasked with finding out why the American life expectancy rate his been rising slower than other rich countries despite spending more on health care than any other nation.
The findings, particularly those for women, were, while not entirely surprising, upsetting. From the report:
Life expectancy at birth for US women is rising in absolute terms but falling relative to other countries.
Why?
Smoking appears to be responsible for a good deal in the differences in life expectancy, especially for women…Because there appears to be a lag of two to three decades between smoking and its peak effects on mortality, one can predict how smoking will affect life expectancy over the next 20 to 30 years. On this basis, life expectancy for men in the U.S. is likely to improve relatively rapidly in coming decades because of reductions in smoking in the last 20 years, the report says. For U.S. women, whose smoking behavior peaked later than men’s, declines in mortality are apt to remain slow for the next decade.
So because women smoked longer than men (thanks, Virginia Slims!), we’ll be suffering the repercussions much longer. Additionally, as over 35% of U.S. women are now obese, we’ve got diet and exercise problems to thank.
Obesity’s contribution to lagging life expectancies in the U.S. also appears to be significant, the report says. While there is still uncertainty in the literature about the magnitude of the relationship between obesity and mortality, it may account for a fifth to a third of the shortfall in longevity in the U.S. compared to other nations, the report says. And if the obesity trend in the U.S. continues, it may offset the longevity improvements expected from reductions in smoking.
Around 1978, some 17 percent of US women were obese, a figure that grew to 35 percent by 2003. The obesity rate among Japanese women remained below 5 percent, the rate among Italian women stayed below 10 percent, and the rates for women in the remaining countries were between 10 and 25 percent in 2003.
