“Democrat math”

Also known as “math”.

Apparently some conservatives and other deluded souls believe that our appallingly low life expectancy is not a healthcare result, but is instead caused by excess (misclassified, not health-related) infant mortality and excess violence. This, like many conservative beliefs, is bullshit. Proof:

Suppose we have a “true” life expectancy, but two subpopulations that die early for non-medical reasons and drag it down. The “misclassified infant death” subpopulation dies at age 0, and accounts for about 0.003 of our deaths (that is, the excess US infant mortality rate is about 3 per 1000). The “murder death” subpopulation dies at an average age of 25 (a guess), and accounts for 15,000 deaths per year out of a total of 2,500,000 or 0.006 of our deaths. The reported US life expectancy is 78.37 years, and this is equal to the adjusted life expectancy * 0.991 + 25 * 0.006 + 0 * 0.003.

That is, adjusted = (78.37 – 25 * 0.006) / 0.991 = 78.93.

Without adjusting ANY OTHER COUNTRIES (Portugal’s infant mortality rate is better than ours, but not first-class) for worse-than-hoped infant mortality or murders, we move all the way from #49 to #44. That’s not much to brag about.

Update, the claim is it’s traffic accidents

Because I am feeling lazy and generous, I’ll assume average age 30, erase ALL of them, the death rate is 33,808/2,500,000 = 0.0135.

adjusted = (78.37 – 25 * 0.006 – 30 * 0.0135) / 0.9775 = 79.6.

That’s #37 in the list. USA! USA! USA!

That figure is overly generous and should not be relied on, because there are other countries between #49 and #37 with relatively high traffic death rates that would also be “corrected” upwards in the same way, among them Belgium and South Korea.

Further update — what if we try to factor in the exercise that we don’t get because we drive cars to excess?

That might matter. The years-of-life penalty is estimated to be 2-5 years, though it can be made up with other forms of exercise. +2 years takes us out of the embarrassing weeds, and up into the top ranks. However, again, one-must-apply-the-correction-equally; even in the Netherlands, even in Denmark, many people do drive automobiles to excess (how do you think they were able to do these studies in the first place?)