The "deaths of despair" narrative has been found really wanting: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-deaths-of-despair-narrative... and it's probably time to throw it out entirely. The tl;dr is that most of the effect disappears when you use age-adjusted death rates instead of arbitrary buckets (whose average age goes up over time) and adjust for things like obesity, gun violence, and car accidents.
You're literally describing how the patriarchy hurts men. > when all those arguments explain the gender pay gap Yes. Which is why you focus on the delta. The end goal is for that to be more equal via breaking down the societal structures we've created where men are expected to take on more risk and women are pressured against from taking more dangerous work. You're a raging feminist. The patriarchy isn't "men." Both…
We shouldn't focus on the delta (the outcome) but the roots. If men take more risks and die sooner, so be it. If women get jobs that pay less and earn less, so be it. However, men should be able to take less dangerous jobs. And women should be able to take higher paying jobs. (I believe this is already the case) We should just be asking ourselves: "are we not limiting people's freedom, regardless of their sex, race,…
Basically yeah, you got it. Where it seems we disagree is you think we've met our obligation to not limit people's freedom once the walls are removed where I think that obligation is met once all the impediments are removed. The delta being wide and always in one direction is evidence that we missed some. It shouldn't be harder for one group or another and you shouldn't have to fight the current of societal expectations to do it.
What precisely is causing Americans to die so much earlier than Europeans? I know obesity, healthcare access and gun violence play a factor, but is there anything else?
Well 20 years ago the US drinking culture and driving culture made car accidents a main driver especially in distorting the lower age demograpics.
But in the past few years opiods is basically the top cause of death of adults before 45 which then is mostly heart disease.
So the recent drop is almost entirely opiods.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/16umz...
Is part of the reason that there are a lot of younger men dying at much younger ages which skews the life expectancy? Or do they exclude outliers when they are putting the numbers together?
It is a statistical artifact of many more Americans dying due to fatal injuries at a young age. If you remove the fatal injuries, Americans are pretty long-lived despite their poor lifestyles.