Crime rate in this country went up in 2015. And even more startling, life expectancies are going down. http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=10100250CTJ6 Not sure what to make of the numbers, but I think they should be concerning. Death rates increased on a wide variety of causes. I guess maybe baby boomers being much less physically active throughout life than their parents might be a big part of it. Although, even causes of death not related to obesity are increasing. It's odd.
One thought is maybe there is a psychological deal, like lack of hope, involved. Years of people being under-employed since financial crisis of 2008 and no end or change in sight coming home to roost. Makes you wonder if this is some of what Trump tapped into.
I would think the increase in opiate addiction, especially among younger folks, is enough to tick the life expectancy down a bit on its own.
Stagnate wages, little hope of social mobility for many, no decent comprehensive healthcare in many states, etc. are what I've read.
That's what was originally speculated, but it turns out that's not the only thing that has increased.
Maybe I'm being overly literal here, but that isn't accurate. I don't know those stats, so those stats aren't very important as to my level of hope.
Maybe you can't use those stats to quantify an individual's level of hope, but you damn sure can use them to see why across this country people are not confident in their prospects.
So, the psychological/emotional aspect to longer/shorter life explains women having longer life expectancies, how?
Two things: I'm not advocating for a quantifiable hope metric. I'm merely relating what I read as something people have proposed as a factor. That's entirely different than any discussion of whether that is quantifiable. Also, with social science techniques you can easily find a way to comparatively measure things like "hope," within a consistent scope designated by a researcher to represent "hope." I don't know if anyone has done that, and I don't know how much veracity I would give to such a metric, but of course it could be statistically studied in some shape or form.
"Sir, do you feel hopeful about the ability of your children to do better than you have in lifetime earnings?" 20 years later... "Sir, how about now?" You don't think someone who has very different answers to those questions wouldn't have associated changes in their health and decision-making? One doesn't need to know the odds of surviving cancer by stage, to know they are better off with stage 1 than stage 3. Well, bad example. You can know or feel things aren't looking good, without knowing the numbers. You could even be wrong, but still feel things aren't looking good and that then affect your decisions and health.
I would almost always expect the answer to be worse the second time. Still seems really nebulous doesn't really account for the percentage of the population (a percentage I'd think is fairly big) that isn't terribly motivated to move upward.
But even unmotivated people may "feel" less hopeful. Especially when they know they can't make 20 bucks an hour as a high school graduate in their small town anymore.
I don't think it necessarily defeats your overall point, but the second sentence doesn't really seem right. Anyhoo, if they aren't concerned with social mobility, I'm not sure why they'd be affected by a sense of diminished capacity to move up.
