Why isn’t Life Expectancy in the United States Higher?

Life expectancy, or the estimated years of life for a person or group of people, has increased over the years but it is still surprisingly lower than expected in places such as the United States. America ranks twenty-fourth on the life expectancy list under Japan, Australia, France Spain and Italy. What causes this disparity in the ranking and statistics in an advanced industrialized society such as the United States? There are major statistical factors that influence the United States ranking in world life expectancy, involving education level, poverty, race and gender. The diverse groups of people living in the United States affect the health statistics negatively, bringing in influences from education and income levels, race and geography.

In most of the world, women outlive men. They live an average of 6 years more than the male gender for an average of 80.1 years though an average of 12 years in common in Belarus, a country in Eastern Europe (Tischler 2007). Life expectancy has increased almost equally among the gender however, with an increase in 9.3 years for women and 9.4 for men. Men are three times more likely to die from injuries, homicide or suicide than women are (Tischler 2007). Men have higher rates of accidents (49% for males compared to 21% for females), heart disease (11% for males to 9% for females), HIV (10% for males to 7% for females), suicide (20% for males to 5% for females) and homicide (19% for males to 6% for females), however, women have a higher rate of cancer (17% for females to 10% for males) (Tischler 2007). Oddly enough left handed men have a higher rate of accidents than right handed men and also have been calculated to have a lower life expectancy than right handed males (Coren 1992). Men are ...

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...through healthier habits.

The United States consists of many diverse groups of people and the health statistics include groups such as African Americans, Native Americans and inner city populations, all which are known to have severely poor developing health. Health problems such as HIV, heart disease, cancer and obesity affect more of the population than in other similarly developed countries such as Japan, Australia, France, Spain and Italy. This lowers the predicted life expectancy of a developed country such as the United States and brings the ranking to twenty-fourth on the world rankings.

Works Cited

Tischler, H. L. (2007). Socialization and Development. Introduction to sociology (9th ed., pp. 99-101). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Coren, S. (1992). The left-hander syndrome: the causes and consequences of left-handedness. New York: Free Press