Monday, April 16, 2007

Live long and prosper.

That does it. I'm moving to Andorra and I don't even know where that is. Failing that, I do know where Aruba is. I think I could stand to live there.

[please forgive the formatting. i'll fix it if i figure it out.]

Life Expectancy:
Rank Country Name Male Female All


1 Andorra 80.56 86.56 83.46
2 Macau S.A.R. 78.80 84.55 81.60
3 San Marino 77.57 85.02 81.14
4 Japan 77.51 84.05 80.70
5 Singapore 77.10 83.23 80.05
6 Australia 76.90 82.74 79.75
7 Guernsey 76.65 82.75 79.65
8 Switzerland 76.73 82.63 79.60
9 Sweden 76.95 82.37 79.58
10 Hong Kong S.A.R. 76.85 82.41 79.54
11 Canada 76.02 83.00 79.43
12 Iceland 77.19 81.77 79.39
13 Italy 75.85 82.41 79.03
14 Gibraltar 76.09 81.96 78.95
15 Cayman Islands 76.10 81.27 78.88
16 Monaco 74.88 83.00 78.84
17 Liechtenstein 75.16 82.47 78.81
18 Spain 75.32 82.49 78.79
19 France 74.85 82.89 78.76
20 Norway 75.73 81.77 78.65
21 Israel 76.57 80.67 78.57
22 Jersey 76.07 81.07 78.48
23 Greece 75.89 81.16 78.44
24 Faroe Islands 74.96 81.92 78.43
25 Aruba 75.00 81.90 78.37
26 Netherlands 75.40 81.28 78.28
27 Martinique 79.03 77.46 78.25
28 Virgin Islands 74.20 82.25 78.11
29 Montserrat 75.78 80.23 77.96
30 Malta 75.49 80.62 77.94
31 New Zealand 74.85 80.93 77.82
32 Belgium 74.47 81.30 77.80
33 Guam 75.51 80.37 77.78
34 Austria 74.52 80.99 77.68
35 United Kingdom 74.97 80.49 77.66
36 Saint Pierre and Miquelon 75.36 79.95 77.60
37 Man, Isle of 74.09 81.04 77.47
38 Germany 74.30 80.75 77.44
39 Finland 73.74 81.20 77.41
40 Jordan 74.94 79.93 77.36
41 Luxembourg 73.84 80.63 77.13
42 United States 74.24 79.90 77.12
43 Guadeloupe 73.82 80.30 76.99
44 Bermuda 74.89 78.86 76.94
45 Saint Helena 73.95 79.85 76.83
46 Ireland 74.06 79.74 76.81
47 Cyprus 74.43 79.10 76.71
48 Denmark 73.95 79.27 76.54
49 Taiwan 73.62 79.32 76.35
50 Cuba 73.84 78.73 76.21
51 Anguilla 73.22 79.09 76.11
52 French Guiana 72.77 79.60 76.10
53 Kuwait 75.27 76.92 76.08
54 Costa Rica 73.30 78.47 75.82
55 Portugal 72.24 79.49 75.75
56 Chile 72.43 79.22 75.74
57 Puerto Rico 71.05 80.30 75.55
58 Northern Mariana Islands 72.45 78.82 75.54
59 Panama 72.74 78.31 75.47
60 Montenegro 71.45 79.82 75.46



Ah, here it is, in between Spain and France, best skiing in the Pyrenees. A bit far from the sea, but I could be happy skiing.

12 comments:

daveto said...

there is an interesting sidebar to this (and i should provide a link but too lazy). it goes something like this: american medicine is so frickin advanced that they are saving, i.e. giving a chance of life, to many more at-huge-risk "premies" than some of these other countries (for whom the similar pregnancy would terminate, presuambly, as a stillbirth and not count in the [all important!] stats).

kind of like the shortstop who's racing all over the place getting to balls that noone has a right to get to, and yet makes more errors than his counterpart who stands there like a statue and only fields the balls that are hit right at him. the second guy has the better fielding percentage, the first guy is, well, you gott like his enthusiasm.

(howdy)

mdabdqu - madagascar babies die quickly (hey .. i'm just the translator)

hipparchia said...

that's a good point, and one worth exploring. i've seen something like that mentioned before and if i can dig up some links, i'll post them.

gkgrq: gherkin quest
wgnrag: wagging the nra dog

Keifus said...

I've often wondered (and never followed up, of course) about how being young and stupid affects life expectancy (and how much this accounts for the usual male/female discrepancy.* In a country with more public transportation (like ski lifts! where else you gonna go in Andorra?), less open space, lower peak population density (i.e., relatively uncrowded cities), fewer guns presumably...that would make for longer life expectancy from birth, but makes little difference to someone like me.

To put it another way, life expectancy after 30 might be a better measure.

K

tcrkhc: high octane truckin' (certain death right there)

*other theories on that discrepancy will be left undiscussed for the time being.

daveto said...

a lot, k, of course. and on the other side, who really wants to get stretched out from, like 85 to 95, sort of thing. (i'm all for sending them over a cliff .. and I have no idea where i got that idea.) i think hipparchia's stat is one of those general indicator type things, like whether or not you can trust the tap water, or go to a bank machine after dark.

my first job was in the insurance industry and it was the mid-late 70's. at that time the mortality tables the insurance company's used to calculate pension amounts (annuities) was called "standard annuitant's 1937" 1937! only 40 years behind, no biggy for the insurance industry, those guys are always right on top of things.

hipparchia said...

syd: [howdy back] the same site has stats for both life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. you guys, frinstance, you beat us in the healthy life expectancy too.

yes, i'm mostly looking at them as general indicators. difficult to get detailed enough data to really dig into the issues and find answers to some of these questions, much as i'd like to be able to answer some of them.

question for you: do you feel you suffer from health care rationing? i know i do, both when i had insurance and now that i don't.



k: i'd really like to know the answers to those questions you pose, and a lot more besides.

for now, it looks like the people in developed nations with "socialized medicine" live as long as we do or slightly longer, they stay healthy for as long as we do or slightly longer, and they do this for less money than we do [and smaller percentages of their gdp too].

an interesting question i'd like the answer to, if i could find the data: are the 46 million uninsured also the 46 million unhealthiest in our country?

daveto said...

answer: no. though at times i feel i'm lucky. there are horror stories (wait times, lack of access/service, various idiotic bunglings, etc) seemingly all around, and yet my own experience (anecdotal, make the news, etc), and that of family and extended family, has been very good. our system has its flaws, and some of them are big ones, but overall i wouldn't take a step back.

re your question to keifus, my guess is that half the uninsured don't even know they're uninsured, so no. of course, there's a subset there, kind of your version of the untouchables, that nobody wants to talk about ..

hipparchia said...

on the uninsured: i'd be sort of inclined to agree with you, as [anecdotal evidence again] i know several young and healthy folks who are pinching pennies by deliberately choosing to not buy health insurance. still...many of us are like me, uninsurable because we got sick, and many many more are poor and working part-time [so employers don't provide insurance] and they do tend to not go to the doctor unless they're dying. my guess: as a class overall, we uninsureds are a bit less healthy than the insureds.

the insurance industry here is deicdedly less than transparent, so it's difficult to get real data, but deliberate rationing is going on, as well as inadvertent stuff and bungling and so forth. all we have really is anecdotal evidence, but it's piling up.

Keifus said...

I'm thinking that if anyone's going to start pulling out actuarial stats, even from 80 years ago, it's probably a good time to shut up and listen.

Anecdotally, I will say that I have the feeling of rationed care through my private insurers. And how. It comes with a long list of covered/not covered, and covered to what degree. All the bureaucracy and more, in a narrow pool. It was worse at my last job, with just a handful of govt-employed nerds and a particularly parsimonious insurer.

phmihigo: pajama imago

hipparchia said...

[pajama imago! better than pajamas media]

odwrs: odd waiters

yep. all that covered/non-covered, pre-existing conditions, in-network/out-of-network language, it all adds up. mot to mention the hoops you have to jump through once you start filing big-dollar claims [amd often just for small piddly amounts].

Keifus said...

Yeah, I was thinking about going on about it. A guy in my research group (got out a year before I did, and also had a postdoc with the same employers) had a nightmare of dealing with premature baby and stingy insurers. Our dealings only involved a lot of annoying phone calls and questionable finagling.

Dental plans are even worse. I had a lesson just yesterday (meme! meme!) of why fluoridating water is a good idea.

K

ykeginof: [sigh]

hipparchia said...

ykeginof: your keg of inositol, fluoridated

i've often wondered if employers started offering dental insurance [which covers almost nothing of any consequence] as a sop so people wouldn't notice quite so much that their medical benefits were being cut back.

gapwk: gap with potassium

daveto said...

howdy, howdy

more stats for youse guys ..

"How much is $14 billion? It’s more than it would cost to provide health care for a year to eight million children — the number of children in America who, unlike children in any other advanced country, don’t have health insurance." (Krugman on robber barons, here)