Posted by alexandra_k on July 10, 2018, at 23:57:58
In reply to Re: Paul Jay, posted by sigismund on July 6, 2018, at 19:55:37
> ...According to the Continuous Mortality Investigation, life expectancy for a 45-year-old man has declined from an anticipated 43 years of extra life to 42, for a 45-year-old woman from 45.1 more years to 44. Theres a decline for pensioners too. We had gained ten years of extra life since 1960, and weve just given one year back. These data are new and are not fully understood yet, but it seems pretty clear that the decline is linked to austerity, perhaps not so much to the squeeze on NHS spending though the longest spending squeeze, adjusted for inflation and demographics, since the foundation of the NHS has obviously had some effect but to the impacts of austerity on social services, which in the case of such services as Meals on Wheels and house visits function as an early warning system for illness among the elderly. As a result, mortality rates are up, an increase that began in 2011 after decades in which they had fallen under both parties, and its this that is causing the decline in life expectancy.
> Life expectancy in the United States is also falling, with the first consecutive-year drop since 1962-63; infant mortality, the generally accepted benchmark for a societys development, is rising too. The principal driver of the decline in life expectancy seems to be the opioid epidemic, which took 64,000 lives in 2016, many more than guns (39,000), cars (40,000) or breast cancer (41,000). At the same time, the income of the typical worker, the real median hourly income, is about the same as it was in 1971. Anyone time-travelling back to the early 1970s would have great difficulty explaining why the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world had four and a half decades without pandemic, countrywide disaster or world war, accompanied by unprecedented growth in corporate profits, and yet ordinary peoples pay remained the same. I think people would react with amazement and want to know why. Things have been getting consistently better for the ordinary worker, they would say, so why is that process about to stop?
Okay, wow. That's the first I've heard of any of that. The 'Continuous Mortality Investigation'... Huh. Actuary data. Huh. Subscription only. Of course... Hmm... And this is the UK... The 'decline in home visits' thing seems reasonable...
Maybe I should look a little more into actuary data. I was only looking at the WHO... But insurance company data, if you can get it, for sure...
Opoid epidemic? First I've heard of that. Holy crap. I'd really love to find the references for these stats...
How is your opiate stuff? You are / were mostly recreational, yeah? Or a bit more than that?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1099420
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20140225/msgs/1099515.html