sperrico87 said:
. We're 50th in life expectancy, and in the bottom 30% in infant mortality. |
just wanted to respond to this part. those numbers are highly misleading. First off why calculate infant mortality significantly different than most countries. if we were to calculate based off the way say Germany does, then we are inline with Norway for infant mortality, and norway has one of the lowest in the world. Thats because many countries have "size" or "weight" requirements for it to be considered a "live" birth. the US on the other hand, a baby that shows any sign of life whatsoever is counted as a live birth. Also the US has a much higher rate of pre-term babies born than most other countries. Those babies die at 30x the rate than our average, and account for over half of all our baby deaths.
As for life expectancy, again very misleading, we have pretty high homocide rate, and accidental deaths. if you control for those to factors alone, it greatly increases our life expectancy.To further that point, we drive a lot more than most countries, all that driving costs us many lives, that otherwise wouldnt have ended if we didnt drive cars so much (also all that driving means we get less exercise from things like walking and biking). Lastly we have food. a whole lot of food. A whole lot of unhealthy food. this causes many people to eat very unhealthy, and obviously this often causes death. If other countries stuffed their faces with cake as much we do, they life expexency would go way down. A better measurement would control for these factors, or we could look at survival rates from diseases or injuries. Which we lead the world in many of those.
