Quote:
Originally Posted by neggo
OK, that's definitely true. But what about Japanese people supposedly having one of the longest lifespans?
Is that ranking kind of bullocks, then? I guess it's something I'm trying to make sense of.
But maybe life expectancy does not necessarily equal "healthy" either.
|
I think life expectancy is more related to the ability to have access to health care, and is mostly related the general affluence of a nation. That's why Hong Kong, Singapore and Macau are rated in the top 10 (all former colonies or city states with small populations and huge economies), while China is all the way down in the 60's. You could say that the lifestyles of these places are very similar, but China has a lot more poor people without access to health care.
Generally speaking, I think Japanese people live very stressful lives, followed by a lot of drinking and smoking... Yet with easy access to health care, they are well taken care of and can live long lives.
The rest of the top 10 nations all have public health care systems I believe. I'd have to look at each one individually, but putting aside the rich nations I mentioned already, you have countries like Israel, Italy, Spain, Sweden, France, etc, all with universal healthcare... In fact you can probably look at the list of top life expectancies, and directly correlate it to
WHO's list of countries with the best public health care.
The only outlier I spotted was Oman, which has public healthcare, but is #57 on the list. I guess it's all the Mac Donalds they eat in Oman
Comparing #1 Japan to #12 Canada, you are talking about 0.7 year average difference in men. (women are much higher compared to most countries, which pushes the overall average up, and is an interesting stat in itself)