China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data

Re:China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data by Nasrudith on Thursday May 31, 2018 @08:52AM (#17195884)

Shouldn't there still be diminshing returns to some extent in that model? Say for instance improving drinking water quality. Compared to dysentery tainted water a chlorination system would yield dramatic improvement. Then more sediment filterung, robust filtering to remove metal and plastic pollution, etc. But once you reach the point of "sterile mineral water quality from every tap" you will have been beyond measurable lifespan improvement even factoring in lifestyle changes resulting from high quality abundant water. Granted a country has /many/ areas to work on for public health but it may eventually hold no lifespan difference just from sheer saturation of benefits obtained through lifetimes of work.

And there is a shameful backslide in the US for life expectancy for various reasons.

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Re:China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data by eric-hu on Thursday May 31, 2018 @11:15AM (#17196912)

There are diminishing returns for cleaner water past some point, as you say. Cheap and unhealthy foods is a well known major reason, but there are other major factors too.

American cities place low priority on walkability: it's usually cheaper for the real estate industry to build out rather than build up. Regardless of if that's intentional urban planning or not, it reduces the minimum amount of exercise people get.

Another major reason is infrastructure maintenance. I'll bet the recent leaded water issues in many cities made a non trivial dent in America's longevity stats.

Finally, my personal take is that this may be a side effect of some elements of American society. Maybe it's a combination of it being such a large and diverse country. I grew up in America, but I've been living in smaller, more homogenous Asian societies the last few years. Homogenous demographics have their problems, but it seems like they're generally less willing to screw over their fellow country people for a quick buck. (China is worse than America in this regard, so I added a large population to my hypothesis.)

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