Fifty years ago, life expectancy in the United States and wealthy European countries was relatively similar.
Which started to change around 1980. While European life expectancy increased regularly, the United States had trouble keeping pace – and its life expectancy even started to decrease in 2014.
Today, adults of middle and oldest oldest in the United States have roughly the same probability of dying over a period of 12 years as the poorest adults in northern and western Europe, according to A study published Wednesday In the New England Journal of Medicine.
Some experts in medical policy and health say that the trend is a sign of problems deeply anchored not only within the American health system, but with the typical American lifestyle of excessive junk food, not doing enough exercise and confronted with loneliness or financial stress.
“It is really worrying because, for me, what he says is that all of the stressors of stress that harm the health of the Americans is very widespread, to the point where even being rich or rich, you will not be able to escape them,” said Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani, associate professor of health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, which did not exist in the study.
The study examined the relationship between wealth and mortality in nearly 74,000 adults from 2010 to 2022. More than 19,000 adults were in the United States, and around 54,000 were distributed in 16 countries in Europe. All were 50 to 85 years old.
The researchers divided participants into four groups according to their overall assets (not to mention their homes). In Europe and the United States, the group with the most assets – the richest – had a lower 40% mortality rate than the poorest group.
The poorest people in the United States had the highest mortality rate in all groups, which is in accordance with Previous research showing that health results are worse in America.
“We expected to find greater inequality in the United States, but what was surprising is the way in which the richest in the United States compared to Europe,” said Irene Papanicolas, the main study of the study, who heads the Center for Health System Sustainability at the School of Public Health at Brown University.
The richest group in northern and western Europe had mortality rates about 35% lower than the richest group in the United States, she said.
Venkataramani said that the conclusions could not be generalized to the entire American population, but he added that it “would not be surprised if these patterns resounded in other age groups”.
In the United States, poor health results are often attributed, in part, to a lack of access to affordable health care, which can result in high costs for medicines or procedures – or in some cases, do not see a doctor.
However, several experts have said that social and economic factors – such as loneliness or stress – are more likely to affect mortality rates in richer adults.
“It is difficult to pin what is happening on access to health care,” said Venkataramani. “Admittedly, health care must have something to do with it, but that cannot even be a dominant part of history if we see richer Americans having similar or worse results than poor people in other rich countries.”
In addition to universal health care, many European countries offer free or highly subsidized higher education and more complete unemployment benefits compared to the United States
“Many of these countries have social protection programs that do not prevent people from losing their jobs or feeling poverty, but when they go through these difficult moments, this does not threaten their health,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, professor of family medicine and population of the population at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
In the United States, people also consume more ultra-transformed foods and have higher obesity rates compared to Europeans, which can increase their risk of diabetes or heart disease-a secretary of health and social services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised to contact the office.
Kennedy has often stressed the fact that Americans have less good health results compared to homologous countries.
“Our lifespan has dropped. Thus, the Americans are now living six years shorter than Europeans. We are the most sick nation in the world and we have the highest chronic disease rate,” he said last week A video publication on x announcing layoffs of around 20,000 HHS employees.
But Woolf said that the recent Trump administration Evision of federal health agencies And Termination of research grants Put the United States on poor trajectory when it comes to reducing mortality risk factors.
“What alarms us so much in the world of health and medicine is that policies that are now exercised in a fairly muscular way are the opposite of what you would like to do to make America again healthy,” he said, referring to Kennedy’s agenda.
“In all likelihood, my prediction will be that the health gap between Americans and people in other countries will now expand even more spectacular,” said Woolf.
According to HHS, the consolidation and cuts are intended to make the branch more effective and to work to end chronic diseases. The White House spokesman Kush Desai added that “the United States is by far the largest lessor of scientific research funds and is home to the largest global ecosystem of innovation and research.”
“The Trump administration spends its first two months to review the projects of the previous administration, identify the waste and realign our research expenses to adapt to the priorities of the American people will not upset the innovative domination of America,” said Desai.