Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 125 posts

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#91

Post by arp242 »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #77
arp242 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Car dependency and car-centric development is almost everywhere It's the degree of things. I live in Ireland, in a village of a few thousand people a few km outside the city, what you might call a "suburb" in the US. I don't even have a driver's license. It's rarely an issue and can go about my life by foot. bike, and public transport.

> It's rarely an issue and can go about my life by foot. bike, and public transport. You are a very unusual person then, as the vast vast majority of people in not urban core Ireland have (and use) a car. I live in a Dublin suburb, and we're one of the few married couples that don't have two cars.

It's needed a lot less than people think unless you live out in the countryside. While it can be a bit inconvenient at times, in general it's perfectly feasible to not have a car in car-dependent Ireland.

In the US on the other hand, it's needed a lot more.

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#92

Post by spacemadness »

greybox wrote: post #28
mog_dev wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food, I believe it's obvious. France obesity rate is also lower than the US. Large portion of americans eat like they have free healthcare.

This has got to be a massive factor. What shocked me about the US when I went, was how much peptobismol people chugged down. There was not one meal in my 1 week stay there that I could digest without issue.

This is why I cook at home a vast majority of the time. It also depends where in the country you are. You could easily eat healthy in LA, NYC, SF, Chicago, etc. but if you’re outside the major cities you can find it a lot harder.

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#93

Post by pseudocomposer »

magicalhippo wrote: post #81
marcandre wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans smoke more than Americans

Depends on country I think. At least here in Norway, after the ban on smoking indoors at public places like restaurants and bars 20 years ago, smoking went way down. When I visited New York a few years ago I was shocked about how much smoking there was everywhere. Of course, people didn't quit nicotine entirely, many moving to snus[1] instead. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus

I was shocked at the amount of smoking I saw in Copenhagen 3 years ago. And I live in Durham, North Carolina, a historically tobacco city, whose nickname (Bull Durham or the Bull City) literally comes from old tobacco ads.

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#94

Post by ethbr1 »

spacemadness wrote: post #90
lrvick wrote: post #24

Fast food addiction, free-refill-fueled soda addiction, tobacco addiction, weakly trained near universal use of automobiles for daily travel, and unequal access to healthcare are staples of American culture so I am only surprised the spread is not worse. This has very little to do with location or genetics and everything to do with education and culture.

Are you a time traveler? Tobacco addiction hasn’t been rampant since the 90s and it was dying out then. It is certainly not a staple of American culture. Agreed that it’s not genetics. That’s just silly.

How old are people who were smoking in the 90s, today?

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#95

Post by _DeadFred_ »

danaris wrote: post #74
throwaway290 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never been to US but saying car centric development in Europe is similar to US sounds crazy to me. It's not just Netherlands. Vienna, Budapest, Stockholm, Barcelona, Germany and Switzerland... is it really true people in America take buses and trains as often as in those places? and they are also so well maintained? is it just propaganda that public transport in US sucks outside of maybe NYC

It is absolutely not propaganda. I live in a rural village about 5 hours' drive from NYC. There is no public transport here. If I drive 45 minutes to the nearest city, I can catch a train—but that train will only take me to a few destinations (primarily Albany, NYC, or Boston one way, or Buffalo, Chicago and points west the other way). Some cities (outside of major metropolitan areas, which do generally have some kin…

I live in a small (9000) very rural town with low wage jobs (so not a huge tax base) in a reddest of red state and we have our own very nice/clean bus system (it uses bus vans not huge busses). It not impossible in the US, it just depends on if the people of your town care to have it.

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#96

Post by _DeadFred_ »

usaar333 wrote: post #30
pm90 wrote: post #7

I get the feeling that Universal Healthcare (medicare for all) would probably level the difference? What else is responsible for the almost 4yr difference with e.g. France? Is it diet? Is the air/water worse in the US?

At best about half. Compared to UK, roughly other half of gap is drug overdoses, car crashes and firearm deaths https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/americans-die-younger-than...

58% of firearm deaths in the US are suicide. It could be argued a percentage of drug overdoses are as well. While 5-7% of ODs are classified as suicide, even slower drawn out drug addictions leading to OD could be considered it as many use drugs to dull the pain of daily living. We Americans are deeply unhappy. Something is very very broken here.

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#98

Post by supertrope »

throwaway290 wrote: post #51
andrepd wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fast food addiction, free-refill-fueled soda addiction, tobacco addiction, weakly trained near universal use of automobiles for daily travel, and unequal access to healthcare are staples of American culture Every one of those points is also true in Europe (apart from possibly healthcare), unfortunately. Car dependency and car-centric development is almost everywhere, places like the Netherlands are an outlier. Fast…

Never been to US but saying car centric development in Europe is similar to US sounds crazy to me. It's not just Netherlands. Vienna, Budapest, Stockholm, Barcelona, Germany and Switzerland... is it really true people in America take buses and trains as often as in those places? and they are also so well maintained? is it just propaganda that public transport in US sucks outside of maybe NYC

Here's a map of the US. https://i.redd.it/2nt3antutz8f1.png Green zones are counties with more than 10% of people commuting by transit.

It's essentially just NYC, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco. NYC is 80% of USA public transit usage!

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#99

Post by OkayPhysicist »

supertrope wrote: post #98
throwaway290 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never been to US but saying car centric development in Europe is similar to US sounds crazy to me. It's not just Netherlands. Vienna, Budapest, Stockholm, Barcelona, Germany and Switzerland... is it really true people in America take buses and trains as often as in those places? and they are also so well maintained? is it just propaganda that public transport in US sucks outside of maybe NYC

Here's a map of the US. https://i.redd.it/2nt3antutz8f1.png Green zones are counties with more than 10% of people commuting by transit. It's essentially just NYC, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco. NYC is 80% of USA public transit usage!

Apparently there's a bus enthusiast in northern Nevada. (I'm guessing the real answer is towns small enough people walk to work)

Re: Life Expectancy in Europe Compared to the US

#100

Post by NekkoDroid »

potato3732842 wrote: post #59
JohnKemeny wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> comparing individual European countries that were relatively cohesive and healthy until recently, to the whole of the USA Isn't USA a country? How is a country-by-country comparison "typical Reddit ignorance"? I'm gonna use my typical Reddit ignorance to guess you are indeed from the USA.

Because each state in the US has it's own flavor of regulation (and culture) impacting most of the factors that affect life expectancy most greatly. Your access to booze, cigs and healthcare is very different in NM than it is in MA.

> Because each state in the US has it's own flavor of regulation (and culture) impacting most of the factors that affect life expectancy most greatly.

You can also say the same thing about the individual states in Germany.

Post reply on HN