Yesterday’s excellent article by Sabrina Tavernise in the New York Times , titled “Life Spans Shrink for Least-Educated Whites in the U.S.” held some really depressing news. Four recent studies have documented modest declines in the life expectancy of Americans, but the most recent of these studies, identifying Americans who don’t have a high school diploma, tells us something else:
The steepest declines were for white women without a high school diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008 [snip]. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same education level, the study found.
I’m sure that many readers will look at that information and shrug their shoulders. Black women, and minority women in general, have long had to deal with the problems caused by lack of education, poverty and poor health, and perhaps this is just an effect of white women not knowing how to cope as well as other women in the same situation. (Cluelessness among the formerly entitled might be the subject of another diary.)
However, the really depressing part of Ms. Tavernise’s article is this:
The dropping life expectancies have helped weigh down the United States in international life expectancy rankings, particularly for women. In 2010, American women fell to 41st place, down from 14th place in 1985, in the United Nations rankings. Among developed countries, American women sank from the middle of the pack in 1970 to last place in 2010…
There it is, ladies and gentlemen.
The life expectancy of American women is currently the lowest in the developed world.
And the conservative Republicans are bent on destroying any part of our health care system that attends specifically to women’s needs. Trying to get the ladies back to the 19th century? That's real conservatism!