
Spain will soon overtake Japan in life expectancy rankings - wslh
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/spain-is-about-to-overtake-japan-in-life-expectancy
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whack
I see lots of exotic hypothesis being tossed around, but none of them fit
Singapore, which is only slightly behind Spain/Japan. The Singaporean
lifestyle is one of the most stressful, competitive and insecure in the world.
The cuisine isn't particularly healthy... any more so than the cuisine you
would find at most Chinese/Thai/Fast-Food places.

My armchair hypothesis is that the quality and availability of medical care
trumps most other factors. Singapore is known to have a great medical system,
even for those not well off.

This is probably also the reason USA is doing so badly. If you're in the
bottom quintile, the quality and availability of medical care is awful. If we
ever instituted medicare-for-all, I expect average lifespan would shoot up by
a couple years at least.

~~~
cblum
> The Singaporean lifestyle is one of the most stressful, competitive and
> insecure in the world.

I'm curious about this. Can you point me to any resources to learn more about
that? Or could you elaborate on why it is so, especially the "insecure" part?

~~~
whack
I've spent many years living in Singapore. People are very hard working,
competitive, materialistic and status conscious. A combination which leads to
long works hours and work-stress.

The fact that there's minimal social safety net, certainly doesn't help
either.

I recall reading some studies that came to the same conclusions as above, but
I don't have them handy at the moment.

~~~
cblum
I didn't know the safety net was minimal there. For whatever reason, I thought
it was more like Western European countries.

Does that lead to a lot of homelessness and crime?

~~~
whack
Panhandling is literally illegal, and I'm reasonably sure that anyone who's
"homeless" gets picked up by the authorities and taken away somewhere. So it's
hard to assess how common either is. That said, because the police are
extremely effective at keeping out drugs, I don't think it's nearly as common
as in America.

Regarding crime, Singapore is one of the safest in the world. A lot of that
comes down to effective policing and extremely strict sentencing that puts
criminals behind bars for a very long time.

Family ties are a lot stronger, so a lot of people falling on hard times do
get substantial help from their family members. But there's minimal
governmental safety net of the type you find in Western Europe.

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franciscop
A very interesting fact is that, even with vastly different cultures, there is
a trait surprisingly common in both Spanish and Japanese cultures: family.
Both cultures have parents and kids stay together until the kids mid-20s, and
both take care of the parents when they become older. It feels very weird when
watching USA movies for most Spanish people as there's almost a business
relationship between parents and kids (and don't even get me started with the
military "yes sir" style).

Now I don't know if it's related or not to life expectancy, but it's a very
curious common bit in very different cultures otherwise. This probably also
affect to many other parts of life/politics in more subtle ways (safety nets,
depression, health culture/care, etc).

~~~
takee
I beg to differ as if we were to judge purely based on this logic China and
India would have probably also been at the top of the curve, which is not
really true. Both of these countries greatly value family and it's quite
typical for people to stay with their parents well into 30's and beyond.

~~~
franciscop
What logic? I didn't say it's related to life expectancy, just that it'd a
curious random fact about those two countries at the top. It might be related,
or not, but I cannot say either way.

In fact, it would surprise me greatly if there was a single culture trait
linked to life expectancy, instead I'd expect it to be a combination of vastly
different things that make us get to the top.

~~~
isoskeles
Random fact: Did you notice that both countries' names end in the letter N? At
least, their English spelling ends in N.

~~~
franciscop
Oh cmon, while I think my statement is _relevant_ I cannot tell whether it's
_(co)related_ or not. Those are very different topics and you are mixing them
up together.

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henryhenryhenry
For those commenting it's the oil or the wine, I suggest this resource:
www.nutritionfacts.org

It's an excellent non-profit to get educated on evidence-based nutrition.

In short, what all blue zones have in common is 80-95% whole foods plant-based
diets, moving around throughout the day, and good social support systems.

~~~
baxtr
That’s pretty much in line with a alter Longo’s research on longevity

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watchdogtimer
If a Mediterranean diet is responsible for Spain's long life expectancy, then
why has it taken them this long to achieve this top ranking? Why didn't they
achieve it earlier?

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edko
Spain, as a prosperous and modern democracy, is relatively young. Before that
there was plenty of feudalism, wars, civil war, dictatorship, and hunger.

~~~
gnulinux
Japanese democracy is even younger than Spain or roughly the same age but
Japan has been doing better than Spain.

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delhanty
"The USA is the IHME index’s biggest loser among high-income countries falling
from 43rd in 2016 to 64th in 2040, due to an increase of just 1.1 year – from
78.7 to 78.9 years."

I would have made that the headline.

~~~
krrrh
It’s usually not good form to put a typo in the headline. They must mean an
increase from 77.8 to 78.9. And still the journalist can tell that this is all
highly scientific and worth reporting on because of the decimal precision.

A better article would also look at the predictions made by similar bodies 22
years ago and how well they have held up.

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qwerty456127
Life expectancy is nothing. Quality of life everyone has access to is what
matters. I don't want to live long, I want to live well!

~~~
scirocco
It's better to burn out than to fade away.

Neil Young - My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)

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dtwest
The article mentions that the US is the worst performing developed country. I
find it interesting that nobody has mentioned the US's opioid problem. Kids
dying of overdoses will crush life expectancy statistics. There have been
frequent articles on HN documenting this problem.

Eat your veggies and don't do drugs kids. Well, the bad ones at least...

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randomacct3847
I wish we’d measure the health of a society by instances of chronic disease
rather than life expectancy alone. For me there is not a lot to celebrate if I
live slightly longer in a country with marginally better healthcare but in a
state where I’m full of chronic illness caused by poor lifestyle and diet

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Markoff
is there some chart comparing life expectancy at certain age like let's say 30
and live expectancy dying of natural cause (no car accidents, natural
disasters, crime etc.)? because these take hit on average but most of the
people will not be affected by it

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sys_64738
Looks like a mixture of the top wine consuming countries and Japan longevity.

~~~
cultus
It's probably moreso the Mediterranean diet and the Mediterranean climate
(encouraging more walking). The evidence that wine or any alcohol consumption
positively affects health is equivocal at best (I say as I drink an IPA).

~~~
bobthepanda
The climate is half the battle; the built form is also very important.

It's very easy to walk in the relatively compact cities and towns of the
Mediterranean; it is not as easy to do so in Mountain View, which shares the
Mediterranean climate classification.

~~~
cultus
Yeah, that's probably more important than the weather. Their cities are
incredibly walkable. I recall reading that in the US, folks living in suburban
areas average something like 3 or 4 kilos more than those in urban areas.

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mamon
We've heard this story previously about Greece, where, it turned out to be a
scam: people were not reporting deaths of their elderly relatives in order to
continue receiving their monthly pension payments. Which kind of busted the
myth of the great "mediterranean diet". I wonder if Spain is the same thing.

~~~
pvaldes
Too few cases to made any real impact on statistics probably.

The real problem is that Spain is losing population at the bottom of the plot.
Less young people means more percentage of elders at a given time and this
would raise the life expectancy purely as a mathematical artifact.

~~~
narag
How could that possibly affect longevity? In the way life expectancy is
defined it doesn't seem possible.

~~~
gbear605
I’m not sure in this case, but it could be defined as the age expected to be
achieved of the people currently alive. So if the population was entirely 80
year olds, the life expectancy would be around 90.

~~~
narag
Please don't try to infer the definition, the point of definitions is that
there is one precise meaning instead of many interpretations.

~~~
pvaldes
And what would be this definition? The article does not explain how they
calculated it. Their link is broken.

Please don't infer that all people act the same. Some countries use gallons,
other liter. What is normal for one people can be weird for other.

Real facts: Spain is losing population. We have one of the lower children by
women ratio in the world and the big scam nuked any stability at work for many
young couples worsening the situation heavily. The health system has suffered
also in the last years. Less funds for public health system means people
living less, not more. They should mention this important context in an
article about life expectancy.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117826/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1117826/)
[https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/12/16/inenglish/1481895459_84...](https://elpais.com/elpais/2016/12/16/inenglish/1481895459_844168.html)

If we define life expectancy as "the mean number of years of life remaining at
a given age, assuming age-specific mortality rates remain at their most
recently measured levels" If you have less babies, you have less babies dying
in their first years. Your mortality value changes. You have also less young
spanish adults doing stupid things and dying young. What about the young
spaniards forced to migrate to other countries and that become citizens of
other countries? Do the index count a young migrant man from equator or
Morocco dying in Spain as spanish mortality?

Statistics are just a model, not the real life. They lie, always. We can build
a statistical model to say anything we want. Is the interpretation in the
correct context what counts.

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gamma-male
So olive oil?

~~~
pbalau
Siestas?

~~~
narag
Except in summer holidays, nobody does that.

~~~
paradoxparalax
I have spent 4 years in Andalucia, and a lot of people slept the siesta in
Winter, on the higher parts, some of it were mountains' areas, at Jaen,
Sevilla and Granada, on plain January, where it was pretty cold. ok it was
working in the olive's fields time, so there was a fixed time for doing things
system on place. Woman would stop picking olives and go to sleep. But many old
spanish man slept the siesta too. Younger spanish man and foreign labor like
me would go on the fields until the end of the working day.

~~~
narag
LOL, I omitted the other situation, the one you describe of farms workers in
rural areas, thinking nobody here would care and look what happened.

~~~
pbalau
Probably I should have been more explicit, I find the concept of siestas so
damn nice. I've spent about 6 months functioning like that and that was the
happiest part of my life so far. Start day at 6am, do some work, get a rest at
noon, be productive for the rest of the day and still have time for my social
life

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taneq
If we expect Spain to overtake Japan in life expectancy, then hasn't it
already overtaken it, really?

~~~
Markoff
not if you calculate it based on deaths from current year

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writinghawk
"The chief explanation for Spain’s pronounced improvement is the country’s
Mediterranean diet" \-- this is scientific nonsense unless the country has
only just adopted a Mediterranean diet.

~~~
keiferski
Considering that Spain spent most of the twentieth century at war of under a
dictatorship, it isn’t nonsense.

~~~
writinghawk
Yes it is. The claim made is that the change in life expectancy is due to the
diet. But it's well known that "you can't explain a variable with a constant".
If the diet has not changed, it cannot explain a change in life expectancy.

You are suggesting that the change in life expectancy is due to a period of
living without wars and dictatorships. Whether this is right or not it is
certainly a much more sensible explanation, but it has nothing to do with
diet.

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known
We need to amend
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)
and include life expectancy

~~~
ethiclub
It could/should be argued that it already has a place in the Physiological
level. It's still human survival, just extended (life expectancy) and improved
upon (physiological QOL)

