Americans live shorter lives despite being much richer

Friday, August 28th, 2026

The reasons Americans live shorter lives despite being much richer than their peers are well-understood at this point, Cremieux explains:

The biggest contributor is that obesity is very bad for health, as countries get richer their citizens tend to get fatter, and America is the richest country.

[…]

All Americans regardless of race are, in principle, exposed to a health care system of the same quality understood broadly, although there are gaps in access, but those access gaps don’t fit the order of the longevity gaps—as a close proxy, in 2024, the insurance rates go Asian > White > Black > Hispanic. These race results and the sex ones combine to produce a picture that cannot be explained by a simple health care-centric story. In fact, when it comes to things the health care system can plausibly intervene on, America is usually the highest-performing country—at least cross-sectionally—or it’s very nearly so. When it comes to lifespan and America’s lag despite its riches, look elsewhere than health care.

Posted in Economics, Policy, Science | 2 Comments »

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Bob Sykes says:

August 29, 2026 at 9:45 am

Although the obesity epidemic (at least two-thirds of everyone) explains much the the differences in death rates among Americans (and between Europeans and Americans), the basic cause is genetics. About 80 to 90 % of life expectancy is genetics, 5 to 10% diet, and 5 to 10% excercise and fitness.
Isegoria says:

August 29, 2026 at 3:46 pm

Longevity definitely has a genetic component:

Three decades ago a famous study of Danish twins found that our genes “only moderately” influence how long we’re likely to live. Longevity, the authors estimated, was about 25 percent heritable, meaning the remaining three quarters was determined by environmental factors and lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise. Most subsequent studies found heritability to be somewhere in the 20 to 25 percent range, and 25 percent is now widely accepted. But a new study more than doubles it, suggesting lifespan may be more genetically fixed than we thought.

The study, which was published today in Science, arrives at this dramatic increase by reframing how scientists think about longevity. Rather than lumping all deaths together, the researchers distinguish between two kinds: “intrinsic mortality” comes from built-in biological aging processes and genetic mutations, whereas “extrinsic mortality” comes from outside causes, such as accidents and infection. Early longevity studies analyzed groups of people who were born in a time of widespread extrinsic mortality. That skewed previous estimates of heritability, says Uri Alon, a systems biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and senior author of the new paper.

To sort out the effects of intrinsic versus extrinsic deaths on longevity heritability, he and his colleagues ran computer simulations of human mortality, calibrated using data from those previous twin studies. When they dialed extrinsic mortality down to zero, leaving only deaths caused by intrinsic aging processes, lifespan heritability roughly doubled.

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Jim: That is an astute observation, Phileas. Indeed, to abuse Bill Gates, “People overestimate how much decline can occur in one year, and underestimate how much decline can occur in ten.”
Phileas Frogg: When degradation happens universally, at a roughly uniform rate, it’s much harder to detect, and much more likely to be accepted as, “normal,” than genuinely isolated incidents. Isolated asymmetric catastrophes are more jarring for the public and more like to cause a response than universal and uniform ones. “Family of 3 is carjacked and killed,” in a small town is more likely to elicit a response than, “Over the course of 10 years, your small...
Phileas Frogg: The fact that they both arrived at a general method is interesting, and naturally begs the age old philosophical question: “Is reality a mathematical structure? Or, is reality necessarily instantiated with mathematical properties? Or, is reality simply able to be modeled via mathematics?” I lean towards the 2nd, but I can’t wholly dismiss the 1st and 3rd, though this tidbit does seem to argue against the 3rd indirectly.
Phileas Frogg: Unless and until they release an actual sticker price, it’s only prudent to reserve judgement given the inflationary predilections of our bureaucracy.
Jim: Don’t worry, guys, not only would they not have participated, if Our Greatest Ally had somehow received advance notice, they would have helped to stop it.
Bob Sykes: Next thing you know, people will be claiming Mossad did 9/11.
Wanweilin: In the exact place it was upgraded… hmmm.
Jim: How fortunate that they hardened the structure in preparation of a bomb.
Bruce: The March 1971 Air Force Magazine claims a Soviet FOBS passed over the tip of South America and returned to Soviet territory near the Caspian. Got this from ChatGTP, which says the Soviet FOBS were normally passing over southern South America but did not reenter. It would take looking through all South American media reports of strange lights in the sky and comparing them to all Soviet launches of the period to have a better idea of what was happening. Pournelle had good contacts in aerospace...
Bob Sykes: In modern American textbooks, Newton’s notation for derivatives (f’) has displaced Leibniz’ (df/dx). A step backwards, in my opinion. As much as I found the calculus interesting and useful (I am an engineer.), complex numbers and the vast simplifications that follow from them were an astonishment.
Felix: “The average gun owner owns about 5.2 firearms…” That looks like a number that should represented by the median, not the mean. Ah, from the PDF, page 27, the median is 3. Graphs on page 29, figure 12.
McChuck: And at least half of all actual gun owners reported, “None of your business!”
Bob Sykes: China offers other countries real and substantial economic benefits. The US offers colonial subjugation, military intimidation, and exploitation and poverty.
Jim: This terrifying uptick from years prior resulted in the FAA and NTSB convening safety summits in March and May, respectively. Whether they dared to discuss root causes seems unlikely. Take it from me: the “aviation safety” “people” would rather disown their family than restore flight to the exclusive province of high-IQ young and youngish white men. That is not hyperbole—read it literally.
Bob Sykes: I see that I, myself, have provided a funny proof. Oh for an editing function. [Fortunately we have a Natural General Intelligence editor.]
Bob Sykes: It is claimed that 20% of American adults are illiterate, and that perhaps as many as 40% of Gen Alpha are illiterate. Elite colleges like Harvard and Berkeley are finding out that some of their freshman are illiterate and innumerate. We have entered a new Dark Age of illiteracy and superstition. Slavery and tyranny will soon follow.
Jim: Attention isn’t all you need. There is something else waiting to be discovered. And there is probably something genuinely irreducible about organic existence that will require the superintelligent silicon layer to be grafted on top of a carbon-and-water foundation. Plus, organic beings have a temporal gravity that cannot be simulated. Large language models are created by a Darwinian process that is a pale shadow of billions of years of the real one.
Isegoria: Longevity definitely has a genetic component: Three decades ago a famous study of Danish twins found that our genes “only moderately” influence how long we’re likely to live. Longevity, the authors estimated, was about 25 percent heritable, meaning the remaining three quarters was determined by environmental factors and lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise. Most subsequent studies found heritability to be somewhere in the 20 to 25 percent range, and 25 percent is now widely accepted....

Isegoria

Americans live shorter lives despite being much richer

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