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Americans Spend More on Healthcare
Yet our health continues to decline
The United States spent over $4 trillion on healthcare in 2021. This works out to almost $13,000 per American. Other countries that are in the same wealth bracket spend about half as much.
Do Americans have better health than other countries?
Unfortunately not. Americans on average experience worse health outcomes than their peers around the world.
Yet, historically, this wasn’t the case.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, U.S. life expectancy was among the highest in the world. Among white Americans, who made up 88% of the population at the time, the life expectancy was the highest in the world at the time. I calculated it to be 52 years old assuming a black life expectancy of 33 at the time and an overall life expectancy for all groups of 49 years.
There were reasons for this discrepancy. Black Americans were more likely to suffer from the effects of poverty and malnutrition and while the gap has decreased it still persists.
However, white Americans were the longest lived group in the world at the time.
So what happened?
Well, the American lifestyle in 1900 was very different.
