{"id":591,"date":"2009-11-02T10:31:06","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T15:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=591"},"modified":"2009-11-02T10:31:06","modified_gmt":"2009-11-02T15:31:06","slug":"life-expectancy-and-infant-mortality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/?p=591","title":{"rendered":"Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"life<\/p>\n

I keep reading dire numbers about the USA.<\/p>\n

For example, one list shows the infant mortality rate in the US as higher than in 28 other countries. The main cause, apparently, is premature births.<\/p>\n

The life expectancy in the US is about 50th in the world. Lower than Bosnia, for example.<\/p>\n

And although this is bad, it doesn’t mean what some people think it means. It doesn’t mean, for example, that I’m likely to die before my brother-in-law in Australia (7th longest life expectancy).<\/p>\n

It doesn’t mean, for example, that I might expect to live longer if I moved to Canada (8th longest life expectancy).<\/p>\n

Why doesn’t it mean these things?<\/p>\n

Because I’m privileged. The life expectancy is an average. It includes people with no access to preventative healthcare and little education about healthy lifestyles. It includes people who can’t afford medication or fresh vegetables.<\/p>\n

Infant mortality is the same way, and my baby isn’t any more likely to die in infancy than one in Japan, for example (4th lowest infant mortality rate).<\/p>\n

So yeah, we know that in this country there are lots of people who suffer without adequate healthcare. That’s an issue. But it shouldn’t be confused with the question about whether our healthcare, when available, is any good.<\/p>\n

What’s the life expectancy of a guy who’s had good health insurance and some money in the bank for his whole life? I don’t know. Without knowing, I hereby declare that it’s among the very highest in the world. And of course, I declare that the infant mortality rate for that guy’s children is among the lowest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep reading dire numbers about the USA. For example, one list shows the infant mortality rate in the US as higher than in 28 other countries. The main cause, apparently, is premature births. The life expectancy in the US is about 50th in the world. Lower than Bosnia, for example. And although this is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyrob.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}