A expectativa de vida nos Estados Unidos.

Por que os Estados Unidos tão ricos e gastando tanto em saúde não tem a maior expectativa de vida do planeta? No texto US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings publicado hoje no The Washington Post há tentativas de explicação como (1) A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while anada and many European countries have universal health care, they say. But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy." (2) Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. "The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times." (3) Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans. Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia. "It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."

Quem quiser avaliar indicadores demográficos de todos dos países do globo, o contribuinte americano nos fornece acessem dois sites: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/ e http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lifexpec.htm