April/28/16

The poor die sooner and that's not because of anything in their environment

So, by default it's genetic.  No amount of opportunity, information or education would help them.  The author below doesn't want to draw that conclusion (too politically incorrect) but that is what the findings of the very soundly-based research by Chetty et al show.  The excerpt below is presented as a convenient summary of the Chetty et al. findings.  The environmental factors considered and dismissed as causes of early mortality were described by Chetty et al. as: "access to medical care, physical environmental factors, income inequality, or labor market conditions"

Income, Life Expectancy, and Community Health. Underscoring the Opportunity

J. Michael McGinnis

In an impressive analysis based on mortality data and deidentified tax records with more than 1.4 billion person-year observations and nearly 7 million deaths among individuals living in the United States during the 15 years between 1999 and 2014, Chetty et al confirm the long-observed association between higher income and longer life expectancy, as well as the recent increase in the gap in life expectancy between the richest and poorest 5% of the US population.1 Looking specifically at the lowest income quartile, Chetty et al also found little association between life expectancy and various measures of access to medical care, physical environments, employment conditions, or levels of income inequality.

SOURCE





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