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Showing posts with label Life expectancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life expectancy. Show all posts
(Reuters Health) - Life expectancy is declining in high-income countries worldwide, driven in part by the effects of the opioid epidemic on younger adults in the U.S. and the impact of a severe flu season on older adults in other nations, two new studies suggest.
A man is seen in silhouette walking a dog at Cunningham Park in the Queens borough of New York U.S., January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
Life expectancy is a measure of the health and wellbeing of a population. Widespread or sustained declines in life expectancy may signal problems in a nation’s social and economic conditions or in the provision or quality of its healthcare services, researchers write in The BMJ.
The first study looked at trends across 18 high-income countries and found that most countries experienced declines in life expectancy in 2015. This is the first time in recent decades that so many high-income countries simultaneously experienced declines in life expectancy for both men and women.
Out of 18 countries in the study, 12 experienced life expectancy declines among men and 11 experienced life expectancy declines among women.
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“This hasn’t occurred in decades, and the size of these most recent declines were larger than prior declines,” said study co-author Jessica Ho of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
A particularly severe influenza season drove declines outside the U.S. in 2014-2015, primarily among adults 65 and older, the study found. In addition to flu and pneumonia, the main causes of death in these countries were associated with an aging population and included other respiratory diseases, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease as well as other mental and nervous system disorders.
Most of these countries reversed their life-expectancy decline in the 2015-2016 period, but in the U.S. and the UK, the declines continued, the authors note.
In the U.S., the source of reduced life-expectancy was concentrated at younger ages, particularly deaths among those in their 20s and 30s, and largely driven by increases in drug-overdose deaths related to the nation’s ongoing opioid epidemic.
A second study in The BMJ suggests, however, that the problems driving life expectancy declines in the U.S. are broader than just the opioid crisis and may extend to a wide range of causes unrelated to drug use or substance abuse.
People are seen in silhouette underneath the Manhattan Bridge during sunny weather in Manhattan, New York, U.S., July 18, 2018. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
“A leading cause is fatal drug overdoses - fueled by the opioid epidemic - but we make a mistake if we focus only on the drug problem, which is just the tip of the iceberg,” said lead study author Dr. Steven H. Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.
“Deaths from alcoholism and suicides have also increased, what some call deaths of despair,” Woolf said by email.
Even worse, the study found rising midlife death rates from dozens of diseases of the heart, lungs, digestive systems and other organs. It even found rising death rates during pregnancy and early childhood, Woolf said.
“Something far-reaching is affecting the health of Americans in the prime of their lives,” Woolf said.
Neither study was a controlled experiment designed to prove what specific factors might be influencing declines in health or life expectancy in the U.S. and other countries.
Still, taken together, these studies highlight a need for high-income countries to invest more in preventing disease outbreaks and addressing persistent social and health inequalities, said Domantas Jasilionis of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany.
“Although a part of this health disadvantage of lower socioeconomic classes is explained by ‘traditional’ risk factors such as poor diet, alcohol and smoking, the question remains why these people have a higher risk of choosing such health damaging behaviors,” Jasilionis, author of an editorial accompanying the studies, said by email.
“There is strong evidence that psychological factors, often having social origins including social exclusion, poor prospects for social mobility, and high income inequality are the main contributors to these ‘bad choices,’ especially in the lowest socioeconomic groups,” Jasilionis added.
At the population level, maintaining steady gains in life expectancy is challenging because it requires reductions in mortality at increasingly advanced ages, Jasilionis writes in the editorial.
“At the individual level, life span also depends on a range of lifestyle choices, including continuous education throughout the whole life,” Jasilionis added by email. “Good knowledge of health risks and awareness about our own health status is a key for a longer life.”
Surfers in Gaza, photo by proIsraeli via Flickr CC
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 503, June 20, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: One of the most widespread myths about Gaza is that it is wallowing in poverty and forever on the verge of a humanitarian crisis as a result of the Israeli and Egyptian blockade. But indicators such as life expectancy, growth in imports, and electricity demand suggest that the Gazan standard of living is rising, not declining. If a genuine humanitarian crisis were to loom, the solution would be simple: disarm Hamas and divert its considerable expenditures on terrorism to the improvement of the welfare of Gaza’s inhabitants.
The internet and social media have made the creation, rapid dissemination, and perpetuation of myths a feature of political life. One of the most widespread is the myth that Gaza is wallowing in poverty and forever on the verge of a humanitarian crisis as a result of the Israeli and Egyptian blockade.
There is no shortage of compelling evidence to dispel this myth. Life expectancy, for example, is highly correlated with the good life. Japan, Singapore, and Norway lead the world in life expectancy. The bottom of the list contains countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, for example Bangladesh.
The myth-makers would like you to think Gaza is also towards the bottom of the list, but it isn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact. Gaza’s life expectancy of 74 is above both the world average (68 in 2010) and the average in the Arab states. This means that more than 3.8 billion people are living shorter, and probably harsher, lives than Gazans.
The difference in life expectancy between Gaza and those at the bottom of the list is in fact quite staggering. Life expectancy in Angola, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Cote D’Ivoire, and other countries ranges from 50.1 to 55 years, according to the World Health Organization.
Were Gaza on the list, it would rank 86th out of 189 countries. That would place it alongside Paraguay and Samoa, hardly states that conjure images of abject poverty. But why resort to facts?
Perhaps, one might argue, life expectancy in Gaza is a quirk of fate. Or perhaps it is declining because of the blockade imposed on Gaza. The blockade was put in place because Hamas, the murderous terrorist organization that took over Gaza ten years ago, specializes in bombing buses full of Israeli citizens, fires missiles from hospitals (as the United Arab Emirates Red Crescent Society accused Hamas of doing), and launches assaults against Israeli civilian neighborhoods.
Reality check: life expectancy in Gaza has not declined, and the blockade no longer exists. Before the brief curtailment of goods into Gaza from Israel in 2007, 10,400 trucks laden with goods entered Gaza monthly from Israel (these figures are from OCHA, the bitterly anti-Israeli UN agency). In 2016, 14,460 trucks of produce crossed from Israel into Gaza per month, a 34.6% increase from before the imposition of the so-called blockade. This means the purchasing power of Gazans has not declined (taking into account demographic growth).
Even the electricity crisis in Gaza points to a high, and rising, standard of living. The crisis is partly the result of the gap between supply and increasing demand. According to Muhammad Abu Amarayn, the spokesperson of the Gaza Energy Commission, there is a need for 450 MW of electricity – way above the maximum of 280 MW that Israel, a local energy supply station, and Egypt collectively supply.
OCHA estimated peak demand in Gaza in 2010 at 280 MW. This means that if Abu Amarayn is correct, demand for electricity in Gaza has increased by 60% in six years. Economists often use energy demand as a proxy for economic growth in the absence of accurate macroeconomic data, as in the case of Gaza. Increasing demand for electricity suggests prosperity, not a humanitarian crisis.
So why is this myth so widespread? The answer lies with those who have a vested interest in perpetuating it. By far the most important of these is Hamas. The terrorist group taxes all incoming goods to pay the salaries of its 30,000 terrorists and the bureaucracy that feeds them, as well as for training, missile production, and the digging of tunnels into Israel. The budget supports 20,000 more on the public payroll whom Hamas has hired since 2007 – mostly teachers who preach jihadism in Gaza’s public schools. Hamas hopes that claims of a humanitarian crisis will bring in more aid, more demand for goods, and a greater flow of goods, all of which it will tax for its own benefit.
Hamas is not the only culprit. The international “humanitarian” relief industry has an obvious stake in perpetuating the myth. In few places in the world can relief agency workers live in a cosmopolitan hive such as Tel Aviv, enjoy a world class symphony, museums, and night life, and commute to the allegedly stricken areas. In Zimbabwe, you’re stuck in Zimbabwe. Championing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is to champion a personal lifestyle at the expense of East African countries that need the aid much more desperately than Gaza.
Even if the purported humanitarian crisis were in fact to loom, the solution is simple. According to the budget and expenditures for the 2013 fiscal year released by the last official Hamas government in 2014, a mere 2% of total expenditures of $348 million went to development and only 11.2% to social welfare transfers (compared to 25% in Egypt, which has a similar socio-economic profile). The rival PA estimates that over two-thirds of Hamas expenditures went to the production of terror.
The answer to any humanitarian crisis would be for the world community to join forces with the Palestinian Authority, Israel, and by now most of the Gaza inhabitants to force Hamas to dismantle its military infrastructure and spend its money on human welfare rather than terrorism.
The worst thing that can be done is to increase humanitarian aid before the disarming of Hamas, as many Israeli officials and politicians foolishly suggest. Putting the cart before the horse will backfire. It will result in more terrorism, more missiles, and more tunnels into Israel, which will in turn result in a massive Israeli response that will be borne by Gaza’s population, as were the last three bouts of conflict in the past decade.
To be humanitarian means disarming Hamas, pure and simple.
Prof. Hillel Frisch is a professor of political studies and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies
Eight counties with the largest decreases in life expectancy since 1980 are in Kentucky. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Life expectancy is rising overall in the United States, but in some areas, death rates are going conspicuously in the other direction. These geographical disparities are widening, according to a report published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Life expectancy is greatest in the high country of central Colorado, but in many pockets of the United States, life expectancy is more than 20 years lower, according to the report from the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
“Life expectancy in many places in this country is declining. It’s going backward instead of forward,” said Ali Mokdad, a co-author of the report and a professor at the university. “These disparities are widening, so this gap is increasing.”
People are less likely to live longer if they are poor, get little exercise and lack access to health care, the researchers found. Mokdad said the quality and availability of that health care — for example, access to screening for signs of cancer — has a significant effect on health outcomes. The United States, he said, needs to rethink how it delivers medical care, with a much greater investment in prevention, and a more holistic approach to creating healthy communities.
Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University, said that the increasing inequality in death rates at the county level is troubling. “But it’s unclear from this study what has caused it,” said Cherlin, who was not part of the research team. "It’s hard to separate out the consequences of lower incomes, unhealthy conditions such as obesity, less access to health care providers, and of healthier people moving out of some counties.”
U.S. life expectancy dropped in 2015. Here's why.
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The Post's Lenny Bernstein explains a report that shows life expectancy for Americans has declined in 2015 for the first time since 1993. (Monica Akhtar, Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)
The new research echoes other findings in recent years that show that the United States is failing to keep up with improvements in longevity seen in other affluent nations. In 2013, researchers described what they called a “health disadvantage” in the United States when compared to peer countries. More recent research has focused on “diseases of despair” that have contributed to a dramatic spike in death rates among midlife working-class whites.
Mokdad said countries such as Australia are far ahead of the United States in delivering preventive care and trying to curb such harmful behaviors as smoking. “Smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, high blood pressure — these are preventable risk factors,” Mokdad said.
“We are falling behind our competitors in health. That is going to impact our productivity; that’s going to take away our competitive edge when it comes to the economy,” Mokdad said. “What we’re doing right now is not working. We have to regroup.”
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation researchers looked at death certificates from 1980 through 2014. Among the places with sharply increased life expectancy and lower deaths over that period are the District of Columbia and Loudoun County, Va. — where life expectancy is up 12.8 and 12.4 percent, respectively. Fairfax County has the lowest all-cause death rate in the metropolitan Washington region, significantly lower than the national average.
Of the 10 counties where life expectancy has dropped the most since 1980, eight are in Kentucky. The other two are in Oklahoma and Alabama. The report includes an interactive map of death rates county by county (and sometimes by city, when a city is not part of a county). The areas with the worst mortality metrics include central Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta and areas in the Dakotas with large Native American populations.
The list of counties with the most improved life expectancy includes a number of remote locations in Alaska, including the North Slope and the Aleutian Islands, and the boroughs of Manhattan (a.k.a. “New York County”) and Brooklyn (Kings County), as well as San Francisco.
An earlier study from the same research institute showed a huge disparity in the death rate from lung cancer. Summit County in Colorado, home to ski resorts and the town of Breckenridge, had almost no lung cancer mortality — a death rate of 11 per 100,000 population in 2014. The county with the highest rate, 231 per 100,000, was rural Union County, Fla., a small county that is home to a large prison population.
“The dogs have a mighty appetite; they never have enough. But they are shepherds who have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, each to his own gain, one and all.” (Isaiah 56:11)
The five-star, $40 million Moevenpick Hotel in Ramallah. (Wikimedia Commons)
A recent report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) brings to light some painfully glaring contrasts developing amongst the ranks of the Palestinian Authority.
While many left-wing and human rights groups blame the Israeli “occupation” for poor living conditions in Gaza and Palestinian controlled areas of Judea and Samaria, the report paints a picture of a new class of Palestinians living in comfort and even luxury in a fast-developing society where literacy is high, infant mortality is low and citizens are happier than most Americans.
The report, entitled “Luxury Alongside Poverty in the Palestinian Authority”, explores the contradictions between a world narrative regarding the plight of the Palestinian “refugee” population and the realities of Palestinian daily life.
These realities for today’s Palestinian refugees are cushioned by billions of dollars of international aid which have gone towards improving conditions in refugee camps since 1948. The PA receives approximately $2 billion in aid annually from the UN, the US and other governmental bodies. Economic analysts estimate that the PA has received a total of $25 billion in foreign aid since the establishment of Palestinian self-rule in parts of Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the mid-1990’s.
Though much of this aid has been siphoned off by corrupt PA leadership to build luxurious homes and governmental buildings, the effects of the funds are visible in both refugee camps and in the building up of Palestinian towns and cities throughout the PA.
A typical refugee “camp shelter” generally consists of a 4-5 story concrete apartment building with electricity, satellite television and municipal garbage collection. According to the UN, 99.8 percent of camp shelters are connected to water networks, and 87 percent are connected to sewerage networks. In addition, as of 2013, almost 70 percent of Palestinian refugees lived outside of refugee camps.
While a percentage of Palestinians do remain trapped in the slums of old refugee camps, another population is emerging, quite literally, next door: a socioeconomic class which can afford luxury vehicles, new high-end electronics and gadgets, and visits to five-star hotels. Many cities located in the PA are thriving, full of prosperous shops and restaurants and beautiful new neighborhoods and homes. In Nablus, said the report, which is the largest city Palestinian-run city, there are more BMWs and Mercedes on the streets than in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
The report includes dozens of photos of high-end buildings, businesses, homes and neighborhoods going up across Palestinian cities and Gaza. Ramallah, which is the capital of the PA, is now home to a five-star hotel which cost $40 million to build and employs a head chef from Florence, a pastry chef from Paris and a lobby covered in marble. The city boasts banks, brokerage firms, health clubs and a Mercedes dealership which sells luxury-class sports cars and SUVs to wealthy Palestinians. In the city of Jenin, a five-story $5 million mall recently opened whose wares include plasma-screen TVs, vacuum cleaners, espresso machines, china plates and crystal.
The JCPA reports the mall’s CEO, Ziad Turabi, as saying, “We believe we can make a very handsome profit. Many people in the…territories have money but they have nowhere to spend it if they’re after quality.”
In contrast to the dismal images of poverty, oppression and despair projected onto the world stage by the PA and its advocates, the report digests empirical data which reveals another picture entirely.
Some of the facts uncovered would probably shock a consumer of the mainstream media narrative. According to the CIA World Factbook, the poverty rate amongst Palestinian controlled areas was reported at 18 percent in 2011, a number actually lower than Israel’s 2012 poverty rate of 21 percent.
Life expectancy, which is 70 years on average worldwide, was 76 years for Palestinians in 2015. For contrast, the 2012 average life expectancy in other Arab states was 71 years. In 2015, the infant mortality rate in Palestinian areas and Gaza was 13 per 1,000 live births, significantly better than the 27 per 1,000 live births in other Arab states and 36.58 per 1,000 live births worldwide.
Palestinians also surpass other populations in education and literacy. In 2011, 63.5 percent of Arabs said they were satisfied with their education system, a higher percentage than people living in the US (62.8), Netherlands (60.3), Sweden (61.6) and Japan (54.6), and much higher than the overall percentage in Arab states, which was 50 percent. The average literacy rate for people aged 15 and above in Palestinian cities and Gaza was 96.5 percent in 2015.
House of Palestinian businessman Mohamed Abdel-Hadi in Ramallah. (Photo: JCPA)
The JCPA report also mentions that many Palestinians are employed by Israelis, from whom they receive nearly double the salaries that they would get from Palestinian employers. In 2014, the official newspaper of the PA published an article praising Israeli employers for their treatment of Palestinian workers, admitting that the workers are eager for opportunities to work for Israelis, citing higher salaries, more benefits and better working conditions.
In another surprising reveal, the report cites the 2012 Happy Planet Index, which is a survey conducted by the New Economics Forum to measure happiness around the world. Out of 20 Arab countries, the Palestinian Authority ranked third happiest, but even more shockingly, it ranked 30th happiest worldwide, placing it above the US, the UK, Sweden, Australia and Canada.
As the report concludes, there is considerable wealth and a much higher living standard in “occupied” Palestine than PA leaders and pro-Palestinian activists would have the world believe.
Read more at https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/54139/occupied-palestine-more-bmws-mercedes-streets-than-jerusalem-tel-aviv-judea-and-samaria/#Q6htSY02iSl7HSj7.99
