Society & Demographics News and Discussions

[firestar464]

This is a very deceptive graphic. Many of the areas with low life expectancies are predominantly black, Hispanic, or Native American, and vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats.

Again referring back to this

[wjfox]

Record 3.7m workers in England will have major illness by 2040, study finds

Wed 17 Apr 2024 06.00 BST

A record 3.7 million workers in England will have a major illness by 2040, according to research.

On current trends, 700,000 more working-age adults will be living with high healthcare needs or substantial risk of mortality by 2040 – up nearly 25% from 2019 levels, according to a report by the Health Foundation charity.

But the authors predicted no improvement in health inequalities for working-age adults by 2040, with 80% of the increase in major illness in more deprived areas.

Researchers at the Health Foundation’s research arm and the University of Liverpool examined 1.7m GP and hospital records, alongside mortality data, which was then linked to geographical data to estimate the difference in diagnosed illness by level of deprivation in England in 2019, the last year of health data before the pandemic.

They then projected how levels of ill health are predicted to change in England between 2019 and 2040 based on trends in risk factors such as smoking, alcohol use, obesity, diet and physical activity, as well as rates of illness, life expectancy and population changes.

Without action, the authors warn, people in the most deprived areas of England are likely to develop a major illness 10 years earlier than those in the least deprived areas and are also three times more likely to die by the age of 70.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... tudy-finds

[wjfox]

When does 'old age' begin? Public perception may be skewing later

April 22, 2024, 10:20 PM GMT+1

How old is considered old?

The answer to that question appears to be changing as people live longer, retire later and maintain higher levels of physical and mental health into their older years.

A study published Monday suggests that people in their mid-60s believe old age starts at 75 — but the older people get, the later they think it begins.

The research, published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychology and Aging journal, examined data from around 14,000 participants in the German Aging Survey, which studies old age as a stage of life in Germany. The participants were born between 1911 and 1974 and entered the survey at ages 40 to 85.

The people studied reported their perceptions of old age up to eight times over 25 years. For every four to five years that passed, participants reported that old age started a year later compared to their last assessment.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/aging/ho ... rcna148619

[wjfox]

US fertility rate dropped to lowest in a century as births dipped in 2023

Published 12:01 AM EDT, Thu April 25, 2024

The fertility rate in the United States has been trending down for decades, and a new report shows that another drop in births in 2023 brought the rate down to the lowest it’s been in more than century.

There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

After a steep plunge in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the fertility rate has fluctuated. But the 3% drop between 2022 and 2023 brought the rate just below the previous low from 2020, which was 56 births for every 1,000 women of reproductive age.

“We’ve certainly had larger declines in the past. But decline fits the general pattern,” said Dr. Brady Hamilton, a statistician with the National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the new report.

The birth rate fell among most age groups between 2022 and 2023, the new report shows.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/24/heal ... index.html

[caltrek]

A world with fewer children?
May 3, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) In the 1992 dystopian novel “Children of Men,” later adapted to film, humanity faces the chilling reality of a world without children, a global infertility crisis that threatens to extinguish the species. While this apocalyptic vision might seem far-fetched, today's real world faces a quieter but equally alarming phenomenon: declining human fertility. This is not due to a sudden inability to reproduce but rather a collective, culturally driven decline in the desire to bring new life into the world.

In a paper published in Nature Mental Health, University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists Michael Platt and Peter Sterling posit that the underlying mechanism of these declines may be despair, not dissimilar to what the movie depicts: a pervasive sense of hopelessness stemming from increasing inequality, economic uncertainty, and social fragmentation.

The researchers outline how the laws of conservation biology warn that any species unable to maintain its population risks extinction, and in the U.S. birth rates have been dipping below replacement levels for 50 years. The implications of this are far-reaching, and without intervention the repercussions will resonate throughout economies, societies, and generations to come. To discuss further and learn more, Penn Today sat with Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor Platt.

How did you and Peter Sterling both become interested in examining the effects of despair in the context of population declines?
We're biologists, and when a biologist notices that species fertility has fallen well below replacement for many years—since 1973 in U.S. —there are two big questions.

1) How long will this continue because eventually it leads to population collapse and extinction? 2) Since the biological drive to produce offspring is normally so strong but in this case is superseded by a more powerful force, we wondered what is the cause of collapsing fertility.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1043532

caltrek’s comment: I am one of those that feels that the world is overpopulated. So, a culturally driven decline in infertility is actually a good thing. Obviously, if taken to an extreme it can become a real problem. Even at more moderate levels, there are challenges posed as noted in the article such as care for the elderly.

The introduction of robots and further mechanization into the workforce can offer a partial answer.

For developed countries, relatively relaxed immigration standards can also be of help. Unfortunately, there often seems to be a backlash against the idea and practice of allowing for more immigration. It would seem that on the one hand you have declining birth rates brought on by “a pervasive sense of hopelessness stemming from increasing inequality, economic uncertainty, and social fragmentation.” On the other hand, you have a paranoid backlash that gives rise to replacement conspiracy theories. Thus, relying on immigration poses its own set of challenges.