The decline among the least educated non-Hispanic white redneck Christians, who make up a
shrinking share of the population, widened an already troubling gap. The
latest estimate shows life expectancy for white women without a high
school diploma was 73.5 years, compared with 83.9 years for white women
with a college degree or more. For white men, the gap was even bigger:
67.5 years for the least educated white men compared with 80.4 for those
with a college degree or better.
The dropping life expectancies have helped weigh down the United States
in international life expectancy rankings, particularly for women. In
2010, American women fell to 41st place, down from 14th place in 1985,
in the United Nations rankings. Among developed countries, American
women sank from the middle of the pack in 1970 to last place in 2010,
according to the Human Mortality Database.
The slump is so vexing that it became the subject of an inquiry by the
National Academy of Sciences, which published a report on it last year.
“There’s this enormous issue of why,” said David Cutler, an economics
professor at Harvard who was an author of a 2008 paper that found modest
declines in life expectancy for less educated white women from 1981 to
2000. “It’s very puzzling and we don’t have a great explanation.”
And it is yet another sign of distress in one of the country’s most
vulnerable groups during a period when major social changes are
transforming life for less educated whites. Childbirth outside marriage
has soared, increasing pressures on women who are more likely to be
single parents. Those who do marry tend to choose mates with similar
education levels, concentrating the disadvantage.
So keep sitting in front of The TV watching Crap -Smokin and Drinking and Eating more Crap and die young and ugly.
