An amazing new study shows the U.S. is doing much worse than other developed countries at performing the most basic function of civilization: keeping people alive.
In the last 30 years, two important things have happened with US lifespans.
1. US longevity fell way behind much of Europe
2. This happened even though the Black-white mortality gap shrunk by half, thanks to strong improvements in Black mortality in high-poverty areas.
1. In the last 30 years, Black infant mortality in the U.S. has improved by a lot
2. But the slope of the red line is still steep, which means Black infants in high-poverty areas have much worse outcomes
3. In Europe, no slope = very little effect of poverty on infant death
It's the same story for all ages
1. Black Americans have higher mortality than whites 2. The Black-white mortality gap is declining 3. In the US, where you live still strongly determines when you'll die 4. In Europe, ppl live more similar lifespans in rich and poor areas
Why is the Black-white mortality gap shrinking?
- Fewer homicides, which disproportionately affect Black Americans
- More deaths of despair, which dis. affects whites
- Declining infant mortality
- Cancer treatments seem to be reaching more Black Americans since the '90s
It's tempting to reach for 1 Big Explanation, but many things suppress US lifespan growth
- We kill one another with guns more, bc there are more guns
- We die in cars more, bc we drive a lot
- We have higher infant mortality, too, but I don't think that's bc of guns or cars
If one thing connects the decline in Black-white mortality differences *and* the superior performance of Europe, it's this:
Life and death are more interconnected than many ppl think. And policies to reduce differences in mortality outcomes seem to help EVERYBODY live longer.
Important coda: The paper above only looked at white and Black mortality, by county.
The fact that US immigrants seem to be exceptions to the overall US mortality penalty is a very interesting thing that I wish I had a handy explanation for!
1. New Fed survey: 72% of Americans say their own finances are "doing at least okay" ... but just 22% say the national economy is good
2. In all 7 swing states, majority say (a) their state’s economy is good, and (b) the nat'l economy is bad
"Everything is terrible but I'm fine" has a lot of parts to it.
But one part of it is ppl have direct experience of their own life but draw impressions of the world from media, which is negative-biased and getting more negative over time.
The most fundamental bias in news is not left, right, pro-corporate, or anti-tech. It's a bad toward catastrophic frames. An analysis of 105,000 different variations of news stories generating 5.7 million clicks found that "for a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%"
2. Extreme opinions drive in-group sharing
On Twitter, 97% of political posts on Twitter come from 10% of the most active users, and 90% of political opinions are represented by less than 3% of tweets. Because these users are disproportionately extreme, it creates a situation where the moderate middle, which might be dominant in corporeal reality, is absent online.
One myth of religion in America is that, since secularism in the west is old, the great dechurching is an old phenomenon, too.
That's not quite right.
Church attendance was remarkably steady in the 20th century. This wave of religious un-affiliation is only 30 years old.
Ppl often say stuff like: Religion declined, and Americans tried to replace faith in god w/ crystals, or politics, or UFOs.
I'm interested in the time-use piece of this. Religious rituals declined, and Americans seem to have replaced them with ... sitting at home watching TV.
But rather than frame this achievement as a win for renters—or for the arg that housing prices respond to supply growth—WSJ frames it pretty clearly as bad news across the board.
Seems important to arguments about supply side growth and prices that Austin
(a) leads the nation is apartment construction as a share of supply, and
(b) rent prices have meaningfully declined
Yes, housing is a market, producers are a part of the market, and markets don't work longterm if prices just go down.
But, again, FRAMING. Downtown housing supply in rich, high-productive metros is a national problem. Solving that problem *necessarily* requires rents to soften.
Need for Chaos is a politics that transcends partisanship and polarization, as we understand it.
It's not about being a Republican. It's not about hating Democrats. It's about hating *both* parties, distrusting *every* institution, despising *any* individual branded The Elite.
Above all, need for chaos is a kind of aesthetic taste for burn-it-down rhetoric that proposes to destroy the System without any clear sense of what should replace it. This kind of politics appeals to people as a blend of corrective justice and entertainment.