The Poor and the Black Can Just Go Die
When considering longevity rates and the fundamental reasons why (lack of affordable healthcare mostly), it’s stunning to see the disparities that exist due to race, gender and income. But a key part of the latest on the topic (from the NY Times today) demonstrates that the country was narrowing the gap from 1966-1980 and has been widening the disparity ever since.
That coincides exactly to the beginning of Reaganomics. Who could guess that the only thing to trickle down would be more disease and faster deaths?
March 23rd, 2008 at 6:22 am
Let me see.
One the New York Times not know the cause of the life expectancy disparity.
Two, there is no reason to expect that different demographic groups, with different genetic make-ups, and different cultues would be expected to similar life expectanies.
Yet somehow the Times asserts this is a problem, and must be fixed.
Finally why no mention of the male-female life expectancy disparit? If the the Time want to demand that poor AIDS infected drug users live as long as rich white folks, as a male I demand the seven years of life expectany fhe femalss stole from us.
March 23rd, 2008 at 8:14 am
Well, the interesting thing is that the gap narrowed from the mid 60’s to 1980, as the socio-economic resource gap narrowed society-wide; funny… these things didn’t seem to improve much from say 1993 to 2001, which should tell us something about… oh, someone who claims great prowess in health care issues, should they be elected President.
Anyway, the correlation is certainly quite logical– from diet/exercise, to lifestyle choices, to information, to the (already rationed) treatment the system will dole out, the poor, and especially poor non-Whites, just won’t do as well.
Of course, unless it can be shown that poor WHITES have closer correlation in this chart for being POOR than they do for being WHITE (i.e., the trend is to live less long because you’re poor rather than Black or Latino), I wouldn’t expect any kind of public policy changes to address these issues from anyone except perhaps a President Obama. After all, not only will such things cost money, but it will have to acknowledge that there even is a problem.
March 24th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
[…] Kevin Hayden notes the time frame within which the gap has been widening: When considering longevity rates and the fundamental reasons why (lack of affordable healthcare mostly), it’s stunning to see the disparities that exist due to race, gender and income. But a key part of the latest on the topic … demonstrates that the country was narrowing the gap from 1966-1980 and has been widening the disparity ever since. […]