3 Reasons Why Americans Die Young

by Pat Salber, MD, MBA of The Doctor Weighs In

There’s yet another story about our lagging health indicators in the U.S. This one is an article titled, “Major Causes of Injury Death and the Life Expectancy Gap between the US and Other High-Income Countries” published in the February 9, 2016 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It turns out we have a lower life expectancy at birth — not because we are dying of diseases that mainly affect the greater than 50 crowd, but because of increased mortality at younger ages.

The researchers compared life expectancy at birth in the U.S. to twelve high-income countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. People in the comparison countries were expected to live 2.2 years longer than in the U.S. (men 78.6 years vs 76.4 and women 83.4 vs 81.2 years).

Screenshot of Table 1 from “Major Causes of Injury Death and the Life Expectancy Gap between the US and Other High-Income Countries” JAMA 2.9.16

Injury deaths

Firearm-related deaths accounted for 21% of the gap in U.S. men accounting for 28,836 deaths compared with only 2,734 in the comparison countries. The statistic for U.S. women is 4,724 vs only 191 in the other…