In the news this week was a huge British study in The Lancet about longevity trends worldwide. The headlines were about the admirable progress that our world is making toward fewer avoidable deaths in the underdeveloped world. Life expectancy there is going up, for reasons that have nothing to do with aging. The secondary headline: Life expectancy in the US is falling further behind other rich countries, and this is much more true of American women than American men. This is a national humiliation, and it has everything to do with economics.
