> In [1], you can see that the last cause, cardiovascular, explains more of the difference than drugs, violence, and accidents combined.

This is for overall life expectancy, not 5 to 40 death rates though. I would expect cardio-metabolic disease is a significant driver of "early" deaths (say before 65) in those over 40 in the US compared to other developed countries.

Yes, and the comment they are responding to is asserting that the primary factor driving the difference is the under 40 deaths whereas they are arguing that is not the case.

The point is, despite the twitter/article author's (perhaps sensationalist) claims, the numbers don't support the extreme emphasis on the 5-40 age group. The difference in life expectancy, which is what we are talking about, mainly (~2/3) comes from health and healthcare issues, and is in fact spread out throughout Americans' lives, from about 0-79 years of age.

You’d expect correctly; there is non-trivial number of people dying from those diseases between 40 and 65 in the USA, and the number is only increasing.

In the USA and Canada, the probability of death from these diseases is roughly 1 in 3.

As I recall, other developed countries are kind of catching up. Malignant neoplasms and cardiovascular disease are becoming the typical causes of death in the majority of cases in most countries, generally followed by accidental injuries and suicide.

The good news is that if you don’t kill yourself, you exercise, and you eat well, you can likely avoid or significantly delay these events. Accidental injury though, that’s hard to control for.

That's a fair point; I was simply trying to paraphrase the FT article in pointing out the importance of "social factors" (including diet/obesity/etc. leading to cardiovascular disease) in explaining US life expectancy and picked the three examples they used. I hadn't seen the chart you linked.

I still think drugs, guns, and accidents are worth specifically highlighting even if they aren't the single biggest driver of this disparity in life expectancy. I'd wager that most people are aware of America's obesity epidemic, but they might not realize the extent to which these three (big) factors make the US unlike it's peers. I certainly didn't.

They are definitely important issues that I have been aware of for some time, just due to where I have lived over the years. However the author went a bit too far and lost sight of the forest for the trees.

One thing that isn't clear to me (and didn't seem to be addressed in any of the charts) is the percentage of the life expectancy disparity that is explained by the "likelihood of dying before age 40" disparity. To me, this is the key statistic that the author is missing because the original article isn't really about causes - which are only tangentially mentioned.

It doesn't matter that most people die of cancer or heart diseases, as these are old people and these are also prevalent in other countries. When someone dies at 25 from a drug overdose, however, age expectancy is greatly reduced as more expected years are shaved off. The US has WAY more of those than other developed nations.

There is literally a graph I linked, and several other in his twitter thread, that show you are not correct. The difference is caused by deaths in all age groups, throughout every age bracket until about 79. Obviously infant mortality rates in the US, which are higher than elsewhere mainly due to poor prenatal care, have the biggest impact on a per-person basis. But we can see that it does not add up to explaining away 74% of all deaths in the US as insignificant (CDC link indicates top 10 causes make up 75% of all deaths), simply because even though the difference is greater in younger age groups, the absolute number of deaths is still too low to completely change the statistics. It certainly has a measurable impact. About 1/3 of the difference, as I said.

I'm sorry but you are the one who doesn't get it. Your data does not show the most important point which is the difference in deaths in people between 5 and 40 years old. In this age range, we are already past the child mortality issue you mention and we are before the other causes of death that are prevalent later. Also, we for this analysis you have to focus on the major differences across countries, not similarities. It doesn't matter that something is causing most deaths, as long as there is another factor, such as drug overdoses, which explains the differences.

You claim this is the most important point, I am saying it is important, but not the most important point. The charts show the difference already, show that this difference is largely related to medical / health reasons (as I said above, cardiovascular alone accounts for more of the difference than all those reasons combined), and don't support your conclusion.

We are talking past each other. You are claiming that cardiovascular diseases and other factors are more important to the US having a lower life expectancy than all these other countries. But not in the age range that is the main thrust of the thread we are in, 5 to 40 years old. The first graph you posted is a bunch of counterfactuals on the aggregate life expectancy, suggesting that the overall impact of these early deaths are almost as significant as cardiovascular diseases, which is astonishing.

I think you are confused about this because you also brought up child mortality. Yes, child mortality is also much higher in the US than other developed countries. But we knew that. The article is focusing on less discussed yet very impactful factors which disproportionally impact young people in the US.

Even the person who started this HN context has agreed I made a good point about these premature deaths not being primarily (their words) from the age range / causes in question, so I am not sure why we need to continue.

You are trying to make the conversation about something it is not, and have changed their point to my point (from primary to important but not primary) to then say I am being unreasonable because I don't understand their point, which is in fact mine. There is no reason I should accept to be shut into your box. Read the twitter thread, and this comment thread again, and it is clear you are the one trying to force the conversation to be about one very specific thing while refusing that it is legitimate to place it into a larger context - the overall causes of lower US life expectancy.

The only reason I care is I don't want a bunch of people running around with the false idea in their head that we just need to deal with the important social issues of our younger generations, and we have solved the bulk of the problem. They are certainly important, even critical issues, but that is not true.

How am I supposed to read your first image? It appears to me that heart related issues, all else constant, have less an effect (2.2 for men) than all the other issues mentioned (2.3-3.3).

When removed, it reduces the actual 3.6 difference to 2.2, the greatest reduction. Lower numbers are indicate bigger effects in those charts.