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Do Rich People Live Longer?

ymedanymedan Posts: 127 ✭✭✭
edited March 2019 in Obstacles to Long Life
Do Rich People Live Longer?
Undoubtedly – by almost 15 years according to a landmark National Institutes of Health study which looked at over 1.4 billion de-identified U.S. tax records from 1999 – 2014, comparing them to associated death records from the Social Security Administration. According to the National Center for Health Statistics (May 2017), life expectancy at birth increased from 72.6 to 78.8 years between 1975 to 2015. This improvement has been attributed to dramatic advances in medical technologies as well as resources devoted to enhanced public health and education programs. As impressive as this is, whether you are rich or not actually appears to play a greater role in how long you will live.

Yes, indeed!

Comments

  • NickOttensNickOttens Posts: 899 admin
    This also came up in the Attitudes toward "treating" aging discussion -- the risk of exacerbating inequality.

    I think we need to be mindful of this and make sure that whatever breakthroughs we come up with a promote will truly extend everyone's healthy lifespan and not just the lucky few's.
  • NickOttensNickOttens Posts: 899 admin
    @Ageing_Better and @mattflynn, I wonder what your thoughts on this topic are?
  • RoeyRoey Posts: 160 XPRIZE
    @ymedan
    That's pretty horrible. Fortunately, our project puts an emphasis on the availability of the developed treatments.

  • efoehrefoehr Posts: 8
    Next week CNN and HBO* are airing a special on the shocking decline in life expectancy in the US, primarily due to declines in middle aged, poor white citizens. They call it "death by despair". Addiction (alcohol, nicotine, opiods) is killing a lot of people, maybe the key to long life is to stay away from drugs?

    *Despite spending more on healthcare than any other country, Americans’ life expectancy is decreasing. In ONE NATION UNDER STRESS, neurosurgeon and investigative journalist Dr. Sanjay Gupta sets out to discover what is happening and why. His starting point is trying to understand the spike in so-called “deaths of despair” — opioid overdose, alcohol-related liver cirrhosis and suicide — primarily among middle-age, white working-class people.
  • ymedanymedan Posts: 127 ✭✭✭
    At the Tel-Aviv University recent conference on Healthy Longevity, Prof. Isaac Sasson presented his research on longevity as a function of education level (below 11 years vs above 16 years). The distribution for the former is almost flat while the latter peaks around 85 with a realtively narrow variance....

    See the lecture video at video.tau.ac.il/healthy-longevity. It is somewhere around the last 13 part of the recording.
  • arshimehboobarshimehboob Posts: 78 ✭✭
    Healthy Longevity - The Preserve of Billionaires

    The available big medical data from electronic medical records, wearable devices, and large research biobanks offer a whole new way to understand ageing that only rich can afford. Therefore, rich have access to dynamical aspects of the ageing process and physical kinetics to follow life histories that are used for systematic discovery of ageing biomarkers and anti-ageing targets for them. Reportedly there has been advance research on plasma proteome as the target for therapeutic interventions against ageing by providing tailored recommendations to reduce biological age, improve resilience measures and prolong the healthspan of individuals.
  • LisaCovingtonLisaCovington Posts: 49 XPRIZE
    But does being rich make you happier? And does being able to afford medical treatments that result in longer health span contribute to that happiness? https://www.businessinsider.com/does-being-rich-make-you-happy-2013-12
  • arshimehboobarshimehboob Posts: 78 ✭✭
    Reportedly, a new study finds that increasing individuals happiness as he/she age is directly related to a longer life.
    A review of 160 studies by Diener and Chan (2011) suggests that happiness adds about seven to eight years to our lives, and these aren’t just any additional years; these are additional years marked by good health and high subjective well-being.

    In a study of almost 7,000 young adults, those with higher levels of life satisfaction and positive emotions were less likely to die from natural causes and unnatural ones like suicide, drug dependency and alcohol-related diseases (Xu, 2005). These results were apparent even after controlling for demographic variables, initial health and obesity, and health practices.

    Like aforementioned the findings of these and the like studies and many others, point to a remarkable conclusion: Indications of happiness when we are young (for example, optimism, positive emotions, smiles and life satisfaction) can predict our survival decades later. However, the research does not show that happiness has any sort of reparative function rather have preventive functions.

    Sources:
    Diener, E., and Chan, M. Y. (2011). Happy people life longer: Subjective well-being contributes to health and longevity. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 3, 1-43.
  • ymedanymedan Posts: 127 ✭✭✭
    Here is a pretty recent paper on the link between Mitochondria well-being and health
    "A Mitochondrial Health Index Sensitive to Mood and Caregiving Stress"

    I guess that Stress can be assumed to negate the effect of Happiness. We'd better keep our Mitocondria happy :-)
  • LisaCovingtonLisaCovington Posts: 49 XPRIZE
    As income disparity rises, what role should governments play in ensuring equal access to future medical treatments? What does that future look like and what steps do we take to get there?
  • JessicaYoonJessicaYoon Posts: 54 XPRIZE
    @ymedan loved reading the interview--thanks so much for posting :smile:
  • ymedanymedan Posts: 127 ✭✭✭
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