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 here's
good news for the New Year. Americans are living longer than at
any time in history — 76.9 years, on average. This is testimony
to both the vibrancy of nature and the ingenuity of man.
The combination
of fewer infant deaths and the longevity of seniors has extended
U.S. life expectancy to an impressive 79.5 years for women and 74.1
years for men, according to the latest research conducted by the
National Center for Health Statistics. In fact, centenarians now
rank among the fastest-growing age groups in the nation, with an
estimated 75,000 among us having celebrated their 100th birthday.
Life expectancy
in America circa 1900 was a mere 48 years (an improvement, nonetheless,
over the Stone Age's typical 25-year lifespan). Compared to the
gains in the past century, however, no period in history has experienced
such a dramatic increase in life expectancy.
What sets the
20th century apart, of course, is the industrial and technological
progress fueled by free minds and free markets. As authors Stephen
Moore and the late Julian Simon note in
It's Getting Better All the Time: "The unique American
formula of individual liberty and free enterprise has cultivated
risk taking, experimentation, innovation, and scientific exploration
on a grand scale that has never occurred anywhere before."
Superior pharmaceuticals
and diagnostic tools are products largely borne of independent thought
and the profit motive. An array of powerful antibiotics and vaccines,
for example, has subjugated the infectious diseases that once ranked
as the leading causes of death. Tuberculosis, polio, typhoid, whooping
cough, and pneumonia claimed 797 lives per 100,000 in 1900. Nowadays,
such deaths number less than 40 per 100,000 population, and account
for only 4.2 percent of all disability-adjusted life-years lost.
The wonders
of modern chemistry and mass production have likewise vastly improved
living standards and prolonged lives — the hand wringing of
environmental doomsayers notwithstanding. Absent chlorination, insecticides,
and refrigeration, for example, 25 percent of us would likely have
died before our first birthday, and an equal number would never
have been conceived, our existence canceled out by the premature
death of mother or grandmother.
Today, age-adjusted
death rates in the United States have reached a record low of 872.4
per 100,000 people. Infant mortality has dropped to the lowest level
ever — 6.9 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. The increases
that have occurred are largely confined to diseases that disproportionately
affect the elderly, including Alzheimer's, pneumonitis, and influenza.
Cancer and
heart disease (which together account for more than half of all
deaths) also continue to decline, according to the government report.
This most welcome trend wholly contradicts the popular notion of
Americans as being enveloped by clouds of toxic tailpipe emissions
and poisoned by pesticide-soaked produce. Air quality, in fact,
has vastly improved, with carbon monoxide concentrations down a
whopping 57 percent in the past two decades, and with lead down
94 percent; sulfur dioxide, 50 percent; and nitrogen dioxide, 25
percent. Moreover — aided by pesticides and a bit of genetic
engineering — a diet rich in cancer-fighting fruits and vegetables
has never been more abundant and affordable.
Our waterways
are cleaner, too. Along 98 percent of the Great Lakes shoreline,
for example, water quality is rated "good" by state government,
for both swimming and drinking. (The heavy metals said to contaminate
some lakes' fish are largely remnants of a bygone era.)
Still, the
Environmental Protection Agency churns out regulations that bear
little rational relation to actually improving our lives. Research
by the Harvard School of Public Health, for example, found that
it costs some $8 million to save one year of a hypothetical life
under the agency's command-and-control regime. But the same benefit
can be had for 1/400th of the cost — that is, through $19,000
worth of medical care.
Death from
cardiovascular disease, meanwhile, has fallen 50 percent, on an
age-adjusted basis, since the 1950s. Blood-pressure drugs, surgery,
and emergency treatment all have contributed, but the most significant
factor remains individual willpower. Smoking cessation and other
changes in personal behavior prolong life far more than a Federal
Register brimming with public-health regulations.
For example:
A 35-year-old who burns 2,000 worth of calories through exercise
each week gains more than six years of life expectancy, on average.
(Likewise, Russian men could reclaim the 10 years of life expectancy
they've lost to alcoholism in the past 15 years.)
Such behavioral
change is directly correlated to educational attainment and affluence,
belying the statist notion that we need a tax on fat, a new food
pyramid, or some other form of government nannyism. This is as true
across international borders as it is within state lines. The infant
mortality rate in poverty-mired Bangladesh, for example, is a tragic
69.85 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to the United States'
6.9. Hawaii, meanwhile, boasts both a high level of median income
($48,000) and the lowest mortality rate in America — while
Mississippi, with its much lower income level ($31,500), suffers
the nation's worst mortality rate.
America cannot
boast of the longest life expectancy worldwide. Japan currently
takes top honors, apparently a consequence of its genetic homogeneity
and peculiar diet. Still, no nation can equal the United States
in its astonishing progress, this past century, in enriching and
prolonging so many lives.
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