1. Microfinance in the United States?
2. Camille Paglia is now a parent, and more.
3. Five comedies for a desert island? I want Smiles of a Summer Night on my list.
4. Americans are just less healthy than Englishmen (and no, it is not health care policy), but they won’t admit it.
The abstract for the American vs English health comparison makes no mention of race. Given what we know about life expectancy and race, diabetes and race, hypertension and race, etcetera ad infinitum, this seems like a glaring omission. Maybe the actual paper (which I can’t access) addresses this, but given that they already mentioned SES I’m guessing they consider that an adequate proxy. If so they’re mistaken.
“less healthier?”
Come on, Professor.
I think a key difference is that Americans drive everywhere. No one in the world walks less than americans do.
This is probably as important as diet in accounting for americans moer health relative to other first worlders.
Is there a free link to the NBER paper?
At least we’ve got our friggin teeth.
I couldn’t quite get it down to five. The NYT lists are mostly appalling, but maybe they are promoting the work of friends. But I believe the following ones will all be watched, a hundred years from now:
Keaton, The General (1927)
Chaplin, City Lights (1931)
Lubitsch, Trouble in Paradise (1932)
Lubitsch, To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Bergman, Smiles of a Summer NIght (1957)
Ozu, Good Morning (1959)
Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Penn, Little Big Man (1970)
Cable Guy
Swingers
What’s Up, Doc?
The Princess Bride
Fletch
Others…
The Return of the Pink Panther
Caddyshack
Office Space
Tommy Boy
This Is Spinal Tap
Fletch Lives
My Blue Heaven
National Lampoon’s Vacation
http://mindstalk.net/socialhealth/
The US has shorter lifespan and higher infant mortality than most other First World nations (all far more socialized in health care or insurance), while spending more money and more %GDP. Note that lifestyle doesn’t explain the infant mortality. (And I think we smoke less than most other nations, though I have no data on that.) The results hold if you look only at white Americans. Also if you look at healthy years past age 60.
Take it FWIW, but I’ve heard that the US infant mortality numbers count premature babies while European infant mortality numbers don’t. But regardless of that possible discrepancy, the infant mortality numbers are extremely low for every first-world country nowadays and the US numbers only marginally exceeded the European numbers.
I’ve also seen studies that lifestyle and not health insurance primarily creates differences in life expectancy between different groups in America. In other words, having guaranteed health care or not is not the driving factor in lower American life expectancies.
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