The life expectancy of Americans suffers from high smoking in the past

Written by Sandeep Nehra

The high rate of smoking in the past largely explains the fact that the current life expectancy is shorter in the U.S. than in most other rich countries, according to a report of the National Academy of Sciences released on Tuesday.

A smoker

Over the past 25 years, life expectancy of fifty years the U.S. has continued to increase but at a slower pace than in many other high-income countries such as Japan and Australia.

This gap is especially notable that the U.S. spends more on health than any other country, say the authors of this document produced by the National Research Council.

The National Institute of Aging (NIA) has asked the National Research Council, which depends on the Academy of Sciences to examine the possible causes of this divergence in the evolution of the curve of life expectancy.

There are 30 to 50 years, smoking was more common in U.S. than in Europe or Japan and the impact on public health that smoking continues to be felt today on mortality rates, determined these experts.

Cigarette smoking appears to be largely responsible for these differences in longevity, especially in women who have generally adopted smoking later than men.

Thus in 1980 the average life expectancy to 50 years for American women was 30.6 years, similar to women in nine other industrialized countries. But in 2007, the Americans had won only 2.5 years older (33.1 years) against a gain of 6.4 years in Japan, 5.2 years in Italy and 3.9 years on average these nine countries, the report said.

According to this study, smoking accounted for 78% of the difference in life expectancy of American women at 50 years compared to the nine other reference countries. This proportion is 41% for men.

Smoking is also responsible for a lower life expectancy in the Netherlands and Denmark, the report of the National Research Council.

For the U.S., increasing obesity, appears to play a significant role in slowing gains in longevity.

While noting “a high level of uncertainty existing studies” regarding mortality from obesity, the report estimated that excess weight could count 20 to 33% reduction in life expectancy to United States compared to other rich countries.

They also note that most sedentary Americans aged 50 and over, compared to Europeans in particular, likely plays a role in reducing their life expectancy.

According to UN figures cited by the study by the National Research Council, the U.S. ranked 28th in world ranking for the period 2005-2010 for the average life expectancy at birth for both sexes with 75, 1 years for males and 80.2 years for women.

They are well behind Britain, South Korea and Luxembourg, but more than two years behind Canada, France, Italy and Japan.

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