There are many factors that contribute to one’s life expectancy such as diet and exercise. Along with other precautions, one is expected to live a long life if they follow a healthy diet and regularly exercise. However, this does not apply to poor people because they lack the appropriate resources. Moreover, place of residence affects the life span of poor people. The article “The Rich Live Longer Everywhere. For the Poor, Geography Matters” by Neil Irwin and Quoctrung Bui focuses on death rates and place of residence amongst rich and poor people. The article “The Rich Live Longer Everywhere. For the Poor, Geography Matters” was published on April 11, 2016. Irwin and Bui discuss how the place of residence plays a crucial role for poor people. More specifically, Irwin and Bui argue that while rich people can live anywhere in the country and live a longer life, the underprivileged do not have the same luxury. They argue that poor people are affected by where they live. To support their arguments, Irwin and Bui provide …show more content…
The authors take on a positive viewpoint throughout the article. They believe that with certain improvements such as staying away from the use of drugs, poor people will have a longer life span despite where they live. While the authors focus heavily on poor people’s life spans in different cities, they briefly brush over details focusing on rich people. Irwin and Bui should have included more statistics on rich people living in different cities such as the names of the cities with the highest and lowest death rates for rich people. This would help obtain a better understanding of the life expectancy patterns. Likewise, the authors mentioned that knowing about the policies in places where poor people live longer would be useful. Perhaps finding more research on this specific topic would make the article much
Sklar, Holly. “The Growing Gulf Between the Rich and the Rest of Us”. They Say I Say. Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel Durst. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. Print.
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
People in lower classes are more likely to get sicker more often and to die quicker. People in metro Louisville reveal 5- and 10-year gaps in life expectancy between the city’s rich, middle- and working-class neighborhoods. Those who live in the working class neighborhood face more stressors like unpaid bills, jobs that pay little to nothing, unsafe living conditions, and the fewest resources available to help them, all of these contribute to the health issues.
Wealth inequality did not always exist in human life. In fact, “Human life have not only been changed, but revolutionized, within the past hundred years” (Carnegie 1). There used to be
Furthermore, Wilkinson and Pickett (2010) argue that health and social problems are worse in more unequal societies. Because of inequality, poverty, social exclusion with the underclass and their welfare dependency, life expectancy is less, mental illness and drug use is high and educational success and social mobility is limited. Data about the United States’ society also finds a correlation between lower death rates and higher incomes, a core t...
Variations in life expectancy and its changes are one major cause of rising income inequality. How long a person lives, as well as their quality of health, can have an important and huge impact on their income and social mobility. The life expectancy of the bottom 10% increases at only half the rate that the life expectancy of the top 10% does (Belsie). This shows that improvements in medicine benefit the wealthy more than the poor. The less wealthy have decreased access to good medical insurance and cannot afford more expensive, quality medical care. The poor are less likely to invest in healthy food and exercise, lowering life expectancy and overall health. These changes result in a cycle that causes the poor to be less healthy, and the less healthy to become increasingly poor. On the other side, the rich have different variations of habits, education, and environments, which can affect life expectancy, often positively for the
During the Industrial Revolution of the Victorian Era, life expectancy was so low due to the lack of sanitation, working conditions, and less medical knowledge that we have now. At the time, the average age people were dying was at 35 years old (Lambert). The age, however, varied depending on where one lived. Normally, people who lived in cities died at a younger age than people who live in rural areas. The class that one was in also greatly impacted a person’s life span. It mainly impacted poor working-class communities, because of the poor conditions that came with being a member of that class (Wilde).
Socio-economic class or socio-economic status (SES) may refer to mixture of various factors such as poverty, occupation and environment. It is a way of measuring the standard and quality of life of individuals and families in society using social and economic factors that affect health and wellbeing ( Giddens and Sutton, 2013). Cockerham (2007 p75) argues: ‘Social class or socioeconomic status (SES) is the strongest predictor of health, disease causation and longevity in medical sociology.’ Research in the 1990s, (Drever and Whitehead, 1997) found out that people in higher SES are generally healthier, and live longer than those in lower SES.
Tony Hiss Author of The Experience of Place brings to our attention that as humans “We react, consciously or unconsciously, to the places where we live and work, in ways we scarcely notice or that are only now becoming known to us…In short, the places where we spend our time affect the people we are and can become.” Place defines characteristics in both human and extended moral communities. Place is not necessarily specific to gender, race, generation or specie. This understanding and recognition of place is fundamental when thinking about institutionalizing ecological and social responsibility.
Landes, D., 1999. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 38-59
Wilkinson, R., 1998. Mortality and distribution of income. Low relative income affects mortality. British Medical Journa, Volume 316, pp. 1611-1612.
As American society has evolved in the past 100 years and technology has increased and improved, so has the life expectancy for individuals. Currently, females can expect to live for 81 years on average, while males can expect to live for 75 years, giving an average life expectancy of 78.3 years (Santrock, 2013, p.536). According to Santrock (2013), “since 1900, improvements in medicine, nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle have increased our life expectancy an average of 30 additional years,” but another important factor is the decreasing infant mortality, allowing a larger population of people, including older adults (p.536). Making good choices in diet, regular exercise, avoiding drugs and alcohol, along with getting enough sleep and maintaining a low and healthy stress level can all increase life expectancy. Relationships, emotional well-being, and having purpose all also play an important role in determining how long an individual will live. As people are living longer, more ...
Berger, K. S. (2010). Invitation to The Life Span (Second Edition). Unite State of America: Worth Publishers.
A Harvard professor Hendren, who is one of the authors of the study: “Location matters, place matters,” confirmed that point. According to him, “it matters where you grow up”; that means the location and the place can contribute to getting out of the poverty. Even though any poor community is full of crimes such as burglary, juvenile delinquency; any person who decides to be out of that social path obtains a better life. For instance, worst friendship is not a good way to succeed. The poor people, who avoid trouble friends and strive for academic knowledge, reach a better life.
Poverty, also known as the silent killer, exists in every corner of the world. In fact, almost half of the world’s population lives in poverty. According to the United States Census Bureau, there were 46.7 million people living in poverty the year of 2014 (1). Unfortunately, thousands of people die each year due to this world-wide problem. Some people view poverty as individuals or families not being able to afford an occupational meal or having to skip a meal to save money. However, this is not the true definition of poverty. According to the author of The Position of Poverty, John Kenneth Galbraith, “people are poverty-stricken when their income, even if adequate for survival, falls radically behind that of the community”, which means people