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Title: Wealthy Americans Have Death Rates On Par With Poor Europeans

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/04/04/0153...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [...] The study, led
by researchers at Brown University, found that the wealthiest Americans lived
shorter lives than the wealthiest Europeans. In fact, wealthy Northern and
Western Europeans had death rates 35 percent lower than the wealthiest
Americans, whose lifespans were more like the poorest in Northern and Western
Europe -- which includes countries such as France, the Netherlands, and
Switzerland. "The findings are a stark reminder that even the wealthiest
Americans are not shielded from the systemic issues in the US contributing to
lower life expectancy, such as economic inequality or risk factors like
stress, diet or environmental hazards," lead study author Irene Papanicolas,
a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown, said in a news
release. The study looked at health and wealth data of more than 73,000
adults across the US and Europe who were 50 to 85 years old in 2010. There
were more than 19,000 from the US, nearly 27,000 from Northern and Western
Europe, nearly 19,000 from Eastern Europe, and nearly 9,000 from Southern
Europe. For each region, participants were divided into wealth quartiles,
with the first being the poorest and the fourth being the richest. The
researchers then followed participants until 2022, tracking deaths. The US
had the largest gap in survival between the poorest and wealthiest quartiles
compared to European countries. America's poorest quartile also had the
lowest survival rate of all groups, including the poorest quartiles in all
three European regions. While less access to health care and weaker social
structures can explain the gap between the wealthy and poor in the US, it
doesn't explain the differences between the wealthy in the US and the wealthy
in Europe, the researchers note. There may be other systemic factors at play
that make Americans uniquely short-lived, such as diet, environment,
behaviors, and cultural and social differences. "If we want to improve health
in the US, we need to better understand the underlying factors that
contribute to these differences -- particularly amongst similar socioeconomic
groups -- and why they translate to different health outcomes across
nations," Papanicolas said. The findings have been published in the New
England Journal of Medicine.

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