This weekend, I saw two very interesting articles, and both of them had one thing in common; they were trying to look at #4 on the Pareto chart, more or less. For the uninitiated, the Pareto Principle states that 80% of a given problem can be linked to the top one or two causes. It derives from the fact that across most cultures, 20% of the population controls 80% of the resources.
The two cases? First, a study (done here in MN) claimed that a "Head Start Plus" program costing $5000/child-year was a success. Now, I checked the stats, and there is a real difference. However, when you're bragging about 71% high school graduation rates and 17% felony arrest rates (vs. 62%/21%) and such, it suggests that there are some bigger fish to fry.
Maybe, just maybe, we need to stop paying people to have children out of wedlock and telling them not to work? Maybe we need to remind kids that there are nasty consequences to unrestrained sexuality?
Just a thought or two...
Case #2 is a study of life expectancy, where the United States has apparently fallen to 42nd worldwide. The authors predictably discuss access to health insurance, but miss a far bigger issue; the big hitters in life expectancy are smoking, obesity, diet, exercise, and to a lesser extent, abuse of sexuality. It might do far more for life expectancy to stop subsidizing corn, sugar, tobacco, and so on than to get more on medical care.
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC
with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent caesars took their
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11 hours ago
7 comments:
...another problem is: who cares that our life expectancy is dropping? We, as a group, are more wealthy, and are therefore more able to spend money on leisure. A lot of us see leisure as an equivalent of laziness.
So, we're spending our more money on unhealthy things.
What're you going to do, mother people into making smarter decisions? Certainly, getting 'more health care' isn't going to fix anything, because the amount of health care that we already get is excessive in terms of actually having any measurable good (I believe the study I'm referencing is the 'Rand' study, or some such, wherein it was determined that people with unrestrained access to healthcare used, predictably, more, but were no healthier at the end of the ?3 year? study).
Why doesn't that study come up all the time?
Well said; 'tis why my main suggestion here is to end perverse incentives.
And why don't we hear about the bad effects of insurance? My guess is that there is a lot of money and power going through that pipe, so you're never going to learn that it's a sewer pipe, not a water pipe.
ah yes, here is that RAND study I was referring to.
Robin Hanson on Econtalk:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/05/hanson_on_healt.html
I don't know what the answer is, but I'm also wondering if dropping life expectancy doesn't have something to do with rising premature births. We have great prenatal care and lifesaving technologies to bring many children to and through birth that would have been lost earlier, but many of those don't survive the first years of life thereafter. For every baby that dies within the first year of life, you cancel out the marginal statistical life expectancy benefit of one person who hits 90. But if that child had never been recorded as a live birth, that 90 year old's lifespan would have tugged the expectancy stats upward.
I'm not at all disputing your point about lifestyle choices, but I do wonder about that. (Of course as you probably already know, I'm also not decrying saving high risk babies. I'm simply talking about the statistical effect of doing so.)
Actually, if you have two people who hit 90 and one who dies within the first year, the average life expectancy is only 60, come to think of it. So for every baby you save through birth but not long after, you need TWO people living very long to repair the "damage" to the life expectancy stats.
And that was still me, forgetting to change the username from my daughter's name.
I think it's about 0.54% infant mortality--probably a 1% or so reduction in lifespan. Good point--include accidents, AIDS, and such too.
That said, I still think that the biggest thing on the Pareto is farm subsidies and insurance subsidies. We pay to fatten ourselves up like steers, pay to persuade people to smoke (and not to as well), and then tell those fat smoky steers that they'll get no financial reward for having a salad and taking a walk instead of a Wendy's Triple in front of "The Simpsons."
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