This chart from John Burn-Murdoch of the Financial Times shows that life expectancy in the US is several years lower than Britain's at all income levels:
However, the difference in UK/USA life expectancy isn't what really strikes me about this chart. Rather, it's the fact that both countries show almost identical curves based on income. In Britain, the richest live 11 years longer than the poorest; in the US it's 14 years. The difference within each country dwarfs the difference between them.
The other thing that's always struck me about this chart is the spike at the very richest level. It's easy to understand why the rich might live longer than the poor, but why does someone in the top 1% live three years longer than someone in the top 5%? Both are likely to have excellent health coverage, so it's probably not that. That means it's likely to be some kind of systemic lifestyle difference. But what?
Complete absence of anxiety?
Like the absence of stress caused by working for the asshole in the corner office. Because you are the asshole in the corner office.
More likely they live longer because of the absence of retirement worries. Social Security? Check. IRA's? Check. 401K? Check. Company Pension? Check. Stock Portfolio? Check. House paid for? Check. Other house paid for? Check.
The ordinarily wealthy have all of that but they still have to deal with one another, the ultra-wealthy don't even have that worry.
In my observation, being the asshole in the corner office has a lot of stress, even if only self-induced: lots of veins bulging as you shout at a lackey for some perceived failing.
I have my first check for $15,000. I have a lot of energy so I always have something first. o87 Now I’m going to work a lot harder and barely finish next week’s episode. w I strongly encourage everyone to sign up. .
periods,……… http://payhome99.blogspot.com
Complete absence of anxiety?
I was going to make a similar comment. I'm not sure about "complete" —but being in the top 1% puts you at about a million/year or more, if I recall correctly. The vast majority of people at that income level are either born to significant wealth or achieve enough financial success early in life that they can probably check out of the "working for the man" scene relatively young (if they ever had to work for the man at all). I reckon most such people likewise never (or rarely) experience worries about having enough money to retire.
Perhaps the far greater time spent in private jets means a higher percentage of life farther away from the pull of earth's gravity? 🙂
Except that time runs faster as gravity lessens.
But it also runs more slowly when you accelerate/decelerate to/from high speed, so that effect tends to compensate for the gravity effect. (With GPS satellites, for example, the effects are about 45 microseconds per day fast for gravity and 7 microseconds per day slow for velocity.)
More exposed to cosmic rays.
This is people living in rich areas, not the rich.
At a guess, top 5% areas still have some poorer people. Top 1% are more exclusive.
This. Somehow everyone else incl Kevin seems to have missed the disclaimer at the bottom of the chart which states that each dot represents census tracts or a community of 100,000 people. It’s really hard to find a census tract or community of 100,000 people that has no poor or middle class people in it. But as you go up or down the scale, it becomes easier: at the tail ends, you can find census tracts or areas of 100,000 people where literally every single person in them is “poor” or “rich.”
The chart mentions "Medium Super Output Areas", which "contain a minimum population of 5,000 persons and on average (mean) contain a population of 7,200 persons", per https://www.haveringdata.net/library/ . And, from another source, "There are 7201 [MSOAs] in England and Wales, with a population of between 5000 and 15,000."
Yes. Old rich people flock to the same areas--unless they're dead.
What?! We don't have luxury cemetaries?
It's well established that higher status people tend to be healthier than lower status people, even at similar levels of income. The US and UK are known to be more stratified than many other European countries, which would suggest that the curve should be less pronounced in Scandinavia.
I wouldn't be surprised if people at the very top of the income scale get better healthcare, on average, than other people. Most people in the top 5% rely on health insurance. I doubt that even 1% of the population is wealthy enough that their healthcare is not limited to what standard health insurance policies will pay for.
THIS!!!!! I mean my parents did alright for themselves, I'd say they are in the top 1% But even so they are at a small risk for out living their money because they are into their 90s and need assisted living and it's costing $20,000 a month. They were able to live on their own until last year when COVID hit my dad and made his existing neuropathy far worse.
What if they hadn't been super savers, what if my dad had not had a stable career with good benefits? What if they hadn't lucked out in buying a house for $40,000 in 1968 that is not worth at least $700,000?
If they are in the top 1%, and paying $240,000/year for assisted living, what are they doing with the other $600,000/year?
Stable career with good benefits and paid off house is not top 1%.
I'm thinking top 5% Dad made good money in his working years and his retirement annuity plus the parents SSN covers just under 1/2 the costs each month. So if they live to Jimmy Carter's age the money might run out.
My guess is that the difference between the 1% and 5% is inherited wealth vs "earned" wealth.
Those who became wealthy in adulthood may not have had that top notch healthcare from birth.
The 5% includes a lot of doctors and businessmen who may have come from lower ranks, whereas the 1% holds very very few who didn't already start out with a leg up.
Speaking from the perspective of the daughter of parents in their 90s the health disparities for Americans in this age cohort in childhood are not as great as they are now. Remember that there weren't all the vaccines back then - my mom's older half sister died from the measles and my grandmother's first husband died from TB likely caught when he fought in WWI. If you survived to adulthood the lack of modern healthcare meant that a ton of folks who would now live to adulthood did not.
But we already determined your parents weren't in the top 1%. The top 1% weren't catching TB while fighting in WWI.
Yep and yet my mom is 94 years old and pretty darn healthy for her age, she gets assistance taking her medications and help with her hearing aids due to her mild memory/cognitive issues. My dad needs a lot more care. My mom wanted to be with dad but we were handling her care at my house for a few months when dad was getting intensive rehabilitation.
What I"m getting at is there isn't a huge difference I bet between wealthy babies born in the 1920s and non-wealthy babies born in the 1920s that are now like my parents -- enough $$$ to afford good care in their adulthood.
I look at that chart and I see:
- a flatter curve in lifespans in a universal healthcare system
- better lifespans across all income levels in a universal healthcare system
There's a lot more to longevity than healthcare. I'm guessing better diets and more exercise along with lower stress levels are involved here.
An interesting fact I learned from reading "Plagues On Earth" a very comprehensive account of human epidemic diseases from prehistory on. For most of history the rich and poor had about the same life expectancy (microbes do not care about anyone's income and medicine was largely helpless and sometimes actively harmful). The first gap, with the rich living longer, starts to show up in Britain at the beginning of the 18th century, slowly spreading to NW Europe and North America, thence to Mediterranean and Eastern Europe and also showing up, independently in Japan.
You're ignoring genetics, which is the primary determinant of longevity.
I’m going to guess better end of life care. Rich people can put their elderly parents in expensive care homes. Really rich people can afford 24 hour personal nursing care at their own home.
It's the bath of endorphins from the thrill of stepping on "the little guys" so guiltlessly.
Agree with kennethalmquist--Instantaneous access to health care. Most ultrawealthy have personal physicians and the means to put them at the front of every treatment line.
The rich pay proportionately less of their income on health care than the poor.
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2020/01/27.html
Stress ages a person. Just look at what one and a half years of fighting for his country's life has done to Zelenskyy.
My grandfather was born on a dirt poor farm in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When he was 16, his older brothers told him that he would get no part of the farm and no inheritance. He immediately walked through Germany, got on a boat to the US, gambled on board to get the $10 necessary to get into the States, and then joined the US army and got sent back to Europe to fight in WW I. He self-taught himself English and engineering, got a job in Ohio and started a family, and saw his kids enter WW II. His lifetime goal was to make $10k in one year, which he did in the year he died from a heart attack at age 54.
My father, on the other hand, went to law school, had a pretty laid back life (except for his army adventures), and died a multi-millionaire at age 94.
He never said much, but he did once tell me that "People live until the money runs out."
I think that we're born with the capacity to absorb just so much stress (give or take a bit), and when you run through your reserves, your time is up.
Ah, the Trump philosophy of exercise.
Another banking "glitch" which allowed theft. Who says hackers using AI won't just bankrupt us all? Then, you know, they will live longer too!
"DUBLIN, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Bank of Ireland (BIRG.I) has fixed technical problems that affected its services and allowed some customers to withdraw or transfer funds above what was actually in their accounts, it said on Wednesday morning. Among other problems, a glitch with the bank's online app had allowed customers with low balances or no money in their account to transfer up to 1,000 euros ($1,090) into a linked account with a digital banking app, such as Revolut, that could be withdrawn via an ATM, local media reported on Tuesday."
They are probing weaknesses in the banking system now. Also...
"Customers of a bank linked to Walmart are reporting they are still blocked from accessing their funds, leaving them in desperate financial straits. Green Dot banking group customers say they have gone days, and in some cases weeks, with holds on their accounts. Green Dot also operates under the name Go2Bank and furnishes deposit and debit card services to Walmart customers."
Mr. Drum should start monitoring the news for these sorts of things. Make a chart!
If each little dot represents a geographic locale — if, I say, cause I’m not a great reader / understander — what factors are causing some places life expectancy dot to float so far above or below the trend line, I wonder.
As for the rich/poor life expectancy gap, I, too, guess stress.
The dots represent census tracts or communities not individuals. So what the chart is actually saying is “the more you live amongst rich people, the longer you will live.” You yourself don’t have to be rich. You just need to embed yourself somehow in a community of rich people, and once there, encourage the Powers That Be to keep out anyone poorer than yourself (because that will drag you down the curve).
This in turn suggests that the answer to Kevin’s question is: rich communities or census tracts have better medical facilities, less pollution, fewer car accidents, less violent crime, etc. than poorer communities. It’s the design of the community itself, the resources (quality of doctors, response times of 911, additional security services, etc) poured into it, and the exclusion of poorer people (who possibly are more likely to have medical problems built up from their lifetime of dealing with poverty) that are making the difference here.
And because the dots represent communities or census tracts and not individuals, it’s highly likely that even Scandinavian countries with their famed social equality will exhibit the same type of curve. Even Scandinavian countries have areas where car accidents and violent crimes are more likely, where medical facilities and pollution are worse than average… and those are precisely the places that it’s also likely rich people fled.
Add in better access to quality food-- which is in short supply in poor areas.
At that level of wealth you’ve got concierge type healthcare with multiple specialists available 24/7 and routine health screening for you; on a weekly or even daily basis. Robert Mercer, billionaire co founder of Renaissance Technologies on Long Island is reported having a private MD working solely for him. That kind of access can’t hurt
Not merely sickness care, like the rest of us get, but your own personal trainers and private gym. Better prevention, and the free time to indulge in it.
"why does someone in the top 1% live three years longer than someone in the top 5%?"
The extra money pays for harvesting organs from the poor?
One answer to the spike at the top could be better - and more expensive - care near the end of life. This and other hypotheses might be tested with life expectancy at various ages. How about the reverse spike at the lowest income? Is this due to higher infant mortality?
Logan's Run
Save social security and medicare....die young.
No, not a real policy. The Atlantic had a article a few months back--what drives the death rate in the US, compared to other countries: guns, drugs, cars, obesity. Not counting the fact that more Americans died of Covid after vaccinations were out then before.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/america-mortality-life-expectancy-pandemic/671350/
Even at the first glance, the US and UK patterns look massively different. One pattern has much, much more variance than the other and starts at a lower level on the left before catching up on the right. Saying they look almost identical is like saying a chart of distance for a vehicle moving jerkily at 30 mph +/- 5 mph looks the same as a chart for a vehicle moving smoothly at precisely 50 mph.
The US and the UK both have spikes at the high and low ends. They look like sideways sigmoid curves which are usually a result of growth and saturation. On the other hand, it could just be a normal component to the distribution which would get one outliers that aggregate in this pattern as tail spikes.
This says exactly the same as Kevin's post, just from a different angle.
I was going to say that the super rich may live longer but their wealth makes them stupid.
Turns out the long life of the super rich is a statistical artifact (according to some well informed comments above).
I maintain that the second part of my hypothesis still stands. It is hard to find another hypothesis for people like Trump and Musk.
Speaking of the ultra-wealthy, what's in Warren Buffet's stock portfolio?
https://i.redd.it/5um1zeq9zfib1.png
Doesn't look like a lot of huge risks.
Super rich bastards much anymore. I think you're wrong about the five percent having the same access to health care as the 1%.
How much does it cost to keep Warren buffet alive
A few thoughts:
1) You'd need to quantify the level of poverty of the first percentile of income in England and the US - if the distribution of community average (or median) income differs between the two countries, comparisons based on percentiles of the income distribution need to be made with some nuance. The distribution of income across communities is not the same as the distribution of income across individuals.
2) People's income tends to increase as they age, so in communities with higher life expectancy you might expect to see higher average income (that is, the arrow of causation points both ways here).
3) Life expectancy estimates used here are based on age-specific mortality over a few years (in the US data, 2010 - 2015), not of a cohort followed over the life times of its members.
I'm pretty sure that Kevin has mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating:
"... the progressive structure of the Social Security system ... is geared toward helping poorer Americans in old age by redistributing income from higher earners. But as life expectancies are increasingly determined by income, the program is losing its progressive edge." - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/as-the-poor-die-earlier-social-security-isnt-paying-off/
I think you aren't understanding the difference in income between the top 1% and the top 5%.
The base income difference is $820K vs $340K. But to really understand that difference, you need to consider the "splurge" income. After taxes, after paying for your kids' college educations, after putting income in your retirement savings, what's left over?
The top 5% are comfortable, but still middle class wage earners. The top 1% can live off their investment income.
I might start by talking to families living in locales represented by dots right where the expectancy curve begins to plummet moving down toward low income, and to families living in locales where the curve skyrockets at the high income end.
Britain has been outsourcing a lot of it's pollution production for centuries longer than the US, coupled with having an actual healthcare system for the past 70 years.
Next super confusing subject, or should we talk about how awesome millennials have it as the entire world is being poisoned and set on fire so that the richest people in the solar system can add an extra zero to the money they're never going to spend.
Masters of the Universe live forever.
It seems plausible to me that while being rich may cause you to live longer, being healthier, hence having a longer life expectancy, may also cause you to be richer (on average, of course). It's really simple. Hard work is generally a necessary, though not sufficient condition, of acquiring riches (there are a very few exceptions, like lottery winners). People who are not in good health are generally less capable of sustained, consistent hard work than people who enjoy excellent health; hence, people who are not in good health are not likely to be rich; people whose health is bad enough that they cannot manage to hold a full time job are not only not likely to become rich, they are extremely likely to be poor.
The independent variable is physical "robustness". Those who are physically robust are more likely to live to get old than those who are not, and those who are physically robust are more likely to become rich than those who are not.