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My reaction to this reading was I can understand this more than some others. I have some family that didn't have health care until last month. They didn't have enough money to get it. I know they were scared of everyday injuries that need medicine that some think are simple things with simple solutions. Life had to be scary and horrible for them.

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I'm glad that I have got to read this article for multiple reasons for what it talks about, is extremely true and so strenuous to the point where it makes me question myself as a human and why we do things when we know is wrong and bad. In the first part of the article, i found it very interesting and mind-opening, and I like when I get that feeling of learning more and wanting to learn more about it. The article starts by saying one of the problems that affect our life expectancy to be so short compared to other countries. For example "American men and women life expectancy at birth of almost 76 and 81 years but in other places like Swiss or Japan people living to be 79 to 86" and I know anyone and including myself, would say it's not that much of a difference, but truly, it's a great difference and one that needs to be fixed before it to late. As the article goes on, speaks of the rich and poor, and when that comes to mind most people believe and still do to this day that poor people will have more health problems, then rich people. Sorry to break it to you but that not true, short life expectancy doesn't pick people by its own will it can happen to rich, poor, old, young, educated, non-educated, even a person who has eaten right things for years, done exercise to stay shape or whatever people do to stay healthy. It doesn't go for one group of people, it can happen to anyone. After it finished talking about the Richer and Poorer problem that affects the health of Americans, it goes on to talk about problems of stress that causes it, but before I go on, I want to all so add on about the first problem " Richer and Poorer". They mentioned a few things that were "eyebrow-raising" mention. "Like injuries, homicides, (including deaths from car crashes); sexually transmitted diseases; HIV and 🤬; drug- and alcohol-related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; lung disease; and disability from arthritis and other physical limitations." that U.S. health has mentioned. The reason why it stroke me to question "humanity" or the things we do as humans, to be more specific, is why we keep on doing things that we know, talk about, and are capable to not do what is wrong. In my mind and opinion, I believe that's why we shouldn't have as much freedom as we now in the U.S, and not just only that, most people and especially people of color, don't get the freedom as they say we do, but that is my opinion. Back to the article, it starts to talk about how stress is another part of the problem in low life expectancy for Americans. As I began to read, I already had an idea of how it affects your well being and as I continued to read, I found that I was correct, for example, the immune system is down-regulated, tissue repair and growth slow down, and reproductive functions are put on hold. Emotions affect how your body will after and what happens to it, I know because I have experienced it myself in my lifetime. Stress, depression, sadness, emotions of those are common and a reason why people also take care of your mental health as well because it all will affect you in some way.

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I just want to start off by saying that life its self would be hard to live without my connections and resources I have now. I always knew that people of poverty life wasn't where they wanted it, but after reading the article it made me think about all the things I have in life. And not just things like clothes and money. Im talking about family, the love that has been giving and shared with me, my education, and even my body. There is people in this world that world die for the blessing that I have and its a shame that we all cant have it. So I need to count my blessings way more because there are way more unfortunate people than me

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my initial reaction to this article was how are so many so proud in this country.  yes we might be one of the riches and most powerful countries. But what is power and money with out the lifespan to enjoy it. As i was reading this article the part that really stood out to me   was that it not just the poor but the rich to. the reason why this stood out is because i always hear people say that the more money you have the better chance of a longer life. but as said by alder  "Just having money in your pockets doesn't make you healthier" why this is true the rich still have better chances of better health care. The poor still have less health care and even none. the poor will be poor well the rich is rich and even as the need for better health care is needed for the poor the rich will always get to it first. Wilkinson says ''We've become more unequal because top incomes have run away from the rest of us''

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My reaction to the article was pretty much what I expected, that there was going to be something that I would read something that would make me realize how the society is and how different places are different. The part that stuck out to me the most was pretty much the morale or the meaning of the article, that most health problems happen due to money or the economy. That because certain places don't have enough money, they cannot afford and gain the help that they need or we since it is talking about America. That the reason people's life expectancy is shortened is because they do not have enough money. The problem is based around minimum wage. That because people do make enough money, they don't get the chance to live as well. So they could basically say "No money equals no life." I can fully understand how the walth gap contributes to the health gap.

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My initial reaction to the article was "wow". That is because I did not know Americans have the highest chance of dying at a earlier age than other countries and I did not know that. The reason that is because of the problems the rich and the poor is facing, consequences

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My initial reaction to this from this article is disappointed. This was my reaction because I often see people that are obese and that struggle with health issues but there aren't too many things they can do about it because of what the stores around their neighborhood sells.

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home. I say this because a close person to me has no health care and that

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My reaction from reading this article was that i was shocked. I was never aware of this wealth-health gap that the U.S is suffering. This article really opened my eyes. The part of the article that stood out to me was

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my initial reaction to this article was how are so many so proud in this country.  yes we might be one of the riches and most powerful countries. But what is power and money with out the lifespan to enjoy it. As i was reading this article the part that really stood out to me   was that it not just the poor but the rich to. the reason why this stood out is because i always hear people say that the more money you have the better chance of a longer life. but as

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When I initially read that American men and women have a life expectancy of ages 76 to 81 years old, I thought wow that's pretty good. As I read on, I read that the American female's life expectancy ranked 16th among the 17 "peer countries" and men ranked last which had me really shocked and curious to know the life expectancy of other countries. According to the article, there are nine broad areas as to why Americans have such short life expectancy. We can use the nine factors causing deaths and the ages of those deaths on a linear graph.

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My initial reaction to this was full agreement. I fully agree and enforce what the article is saying. This connects back to our equations about minimum wage because minimum wage tends to be the cause of this. Health issues, not eating right,or getting the right diet inside your body is basically caused by minimum wage. If your getting paid on a minimum wage your not getting a lot of food, even if you live under your parents roof, or in an apartment, you still have to either help pay bills or pay them. In the article someone spoke on how having "money in your pockets don't mean you're healthier." Not only does money get you the right food, you have to live in the right environment and exercise your body. You can't live off of just water and good food without putting muscle into your body or help gain them. SO having money isn't everything.

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My initial reaction was not being really surprised at what i was reading. The things they are talking about in this article, I've heard many times before. But this article is just another reason to do something about this issue. This article went in depth of why how living in minimum wage can affect your lifespan.That really stuck out to me because I really didn't know something having to do with your finances can literally affect how long you will be on this earth. The article also talked about kids in minimum wage, 1 out of every 5 kids lives under poverty line and will not get the proper nutrition and education they need to go far in life.

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It seems to me as though people in more foreigh countries have a more likely way of for lifting proverty. I guess you can say people that live in proverty are the ones who are most effected. We are in 2019 but yet didnt see a change, its only going downhill especially with 45th in office. What is it going to take for the people/economy to notice that people lives are at stake babies after babies. Politics have a major impact in this but still havent full filled the gap of minimum wage. My enitial reaction to this article was

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My initial reactions from this article were shocking. The part that shocked me the most was when the article stated the U.S. was one of the riches nations in the world but that doesn't translate to them having great health. The reason for this is some people cannot afford or do not have access to health care. I don't understand how the U.S. is the richest country but all people are not insured with health care. If the U.S. has all of this money their people should have everything taken care of that they need.

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My reaction to the article is "WOW", I'm disappointed about what i'm seeing about how we're among the richest countries and how we had the most poverty. I was shocked the most how many Americans could not afford health care because  most of my family does not have health care, so to find out it was a nation wide problem stuck with me, an connection I made was people are in poverty can't afford health care and becoming obese because minimum wage.

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Seeing the statistics of the life the life expectancy of this country got me shook.  The United States is the 'supposedly' rich country according to this  article. It baffles me that we can be the richest country in the world but most of the  country is living on a minimum wage income and that don't have insurance and don't have a college education. Not only that but the diseases and killings are also incorporate. On a graph their would be a positive strong linear correlation that wouldn't end.

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my initial reaction from reading was one of those are you serious i was shocked because the poor have to go through so much

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Poverty has been a great problem. We typically live up to 76-81 years of age because some people are suffering from poverty and they can't live as long as they want to. It is harder for them to get food and feed their families. Sometimes it is even hard to feed yourself. Or to even get some clothes to wear.

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We have never seen health as a right. It has been conceived as a privilege, available only to those who can afford it. This is the real reason the american health is not equal. I learned this when I talked to an homeless man and his story was heart warming  what i'm trying to say that people my be ostentatious about health but is still dirty. THINK ABOUT IT

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Poverty is an alarming global threat as it affects many people all in different ways like in Maré,Rio where it is a low income neighborhood. It has a lot of gang issues and events also in Philadelphia.

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What is Poverty? Poverty is the separation thru out the world. From     high income to no income at all, from the best living community to the worst. All around the globe countries are damaged and in need.

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Poverty has been a problem for many year it affects people differently something poverty can take many forms like not be able to feed your family or your parents cant pay for your cloths you need to go to school with. There are many different sides of poverty but has a whole we usally really only see one and that is being house less. They say the United States of America.

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My initial reaction

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My reaction to this article was like wow.Because like the health here is horrible compared to other places in the world.

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My reaction was not good reaction because the things the poor has to go through with poverty and some people are pushing there self

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My reaction to this is not good because its crazy how im reading it and i didnt know that america is the lowest wealthy country.

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When I read this I think reading is trying show you who is really pushing and doing the work. Like america is strong at this period time and I think we can get over powered and while not last longer by looking at with china and the education of years they have to take and there technology that's been coming apart.And by looking at how we letting clown people we got in are government if they really wanted to could be taking advantage quickly by looking at are education years. But we do have defense and can play offense when coming to warfare but it can always go left when you put some power in the wrong.So when reading this reading that's what I was thinking about.

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My initial reaction to reading the article is that I am surprised, shocked and filled with just sad deep and enraged emotions about poverty. When we first discussed poverty to the last padlet post with the infinite loop of poverty, I only knew how bad it was in certain places around the world and what effects it can have. Seeing that article makes me go "🤬!" and it makes me want to dive deeper and learn more about poverty. Its sad and angering how The United States is one of the richest nations in the world yet we can't improve our health for other poor people, how we can't give money and food and needs to other poor countries and cities in need but we use that money on things we already have or don't need. What stuck out to me is that one in five American children live below federal poverty level and we aren't doing anything about it and how we aren't trying to end poverty.

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What stuck out to me the most was, the "The power of stress". It stuck out to me because I stress out my grandmom in ways i really can't explain. One day that stress was bearing down on her she had this muscle spasm in her neck because of her stress and i was really amazed. My initial reaction to this section in the article was, that i thought that stress does a little to your body mentally not physically.

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My reaction to this is a sad one and hits close to home. I say this because a close person to me has no health care and that is because they are

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no matter the rich or the poor the U.S has one of the worst health compare to other wealthy places and that we fall short of nine broad lines.And you would think that the news would talk about this more so that us kids would know about this saying a lot.

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My initial reaction from reading this is that the United States is so far down on the list. Many other countries are so far ahead of us it's scary. They typically live up to ten years longer than us which is horrible. To think we have the world's most powerful military in the world and we lack in so many categories. But the part of the article that stands out most to me is how it said that most teenage African Americans died of homicide. This really strikes home for me, I know for a fact there are multiple people in our grade are carrying guns, that is apart of gangs, that they think that's the only way to survive. It's scary how far advanced the other countries are and sometimes I wonder whether or not it will be my last day on Earth; not because I did anything wrong but because people would want to do me wrong. But if I could relate anything on this article to our linear relations I'd relate it to the education. The other countries are much smarter than us as the article says. It said they had more years of education with preschool and other things along that nature. While we as Americans drop our kids off at some daycare while we work our nine to five. We say we're doing everything we can for our child but we really aren't and I've seen it myself. It's much worse in communities that are African American, Latino Americans, etc. They barely see their children for the worst reasons including child support, poverty, being a widow and having child services called because your child isn't eating right or enough. They may not even bathe etc. But, the worst part is the government does nothing. The government sits back and watches us 🤬 each other. It's shameful, to say the least. But years of education does correspond to lifespan according to the article.

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What i think about this is that the poor has do deal with a lot of things doing life like when they are gling ti eat the next day or will they have something to wear.And some poeple look like they got it all but at gome can be just like thr rest.

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How long can you expect to keep blowing out the candles on your birthday cake? American men and women enjoy a life expectancy at birth of almost 76 and 81 years, respectively. That's not bad, globally speaking, but not as impressive as the life expectancy for Swiss men, at more than 79 years, or Japanese women, at almost 86.

In fact, U.S. life expectancy ranks 16th for women and dead last for men among the 17 "peer countries" evaluated in a National Academies report released this year by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, called U.S. Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health.

Americans not only die sooner, but also suffer higher rates of injury and disease than their peers in other high-income countries, the report found.

The reasons for America's grim prognosis are many and complex, experts say. It's clear, though, that social and economic inequality is an important factor. And all Americans, rich and poor, are suffering the consequences.

"We knew that Americans had poorer health than people in other countries, but the surprise for us was how bad the problem is," says Steven H. Woolf, MD, a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and chair of the panel that produced the report. "The problem has been going on for many years and has been getting worse."

Richer, poorer

The United States is among the richest nations in the world. That prosperity doesn't translate to better health, however. Where the U.S. health disadvantage is concerned, few segments of the population are spared. The Shorter Lives, Poorer Health report found that just about all Americans - from birth to age 75, with low incomes and high, with or without health insurance, with or without college educations - are worse off than people in other wealthy countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan and most of Western Europe.

Specifically, Woolf and his colleagues on the report panel found that U.S. health falls short in nine broad areas: adverse birth outcomes (including infant mortality and low birth weight); injuries and homicides (including deaths from car crashes); sexually transmitted diseases; HIV and AIDS; drug- and alcohol-related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; lung disease; and disability from arthritis and other physical limitations.

"While some [Americans] might be aware that our health-care system has some issues, they probably think their health is still very good. Our findings are the exact opposite," says Woolf. He and his co-authors note that compared with other high-income countries, the U.S. health-care system is more fragmented, and more Americans are uninsured, often finding health care to be inaccessible or unaffordable.

But health care is only one piece of the puzzle. "Health care is estimated to account for about 10 percent of premature mortality," says Nancy Adler, PhD, director of the Center for Health and Community at the University of California, San Francisco. "Health care matters, but it's a very small part of what's going on."

Individual behaviors are also a cause of concern, the report notes. Compared with our peers elsewhere in the world, Americans consume more calories, experience more violent deaths, misuse more prescription and illicit drugs, and have more alcohol-related traffic accidents.

We also have higher rates of poverty and income inequality than most other wealthy countries, which undermines our health in a multitude of ways. Among the 17 countries evaluated in the Shorter Lives, Poorer Health report, the United States had the highest rates of poverty and child poverty, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). More than one in five American children live below the federal poverty level, making them more likely to suffer from asthma and obesity and have poorer nutrition, less access to health care and lower vaccination rates.

Adults with lower socioeconomic status are more likely to experience high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, infectious diseases and mental illness, according to a report by Adler and colleagues for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Socioeconomic Status and Health. For people just scraping by with paying the rent or finding a ride to work, taking a trip to the gym or to the doctor for a check-up can seem like a luxury, says Linda Gallo, PhD, a psychologist at the Institute for Behavioral and Community Health at San Diego State University.

"With life's competing crises, those demands take precedence over health behaviors," she says.

When considering the American health disadvantage, the picture changes dramatically depending on whom you look at, says Hector González, PhD, a behavioral health psychologist at Wayne State University. In 2012, homicide was the leading cause of death for young African-Americans and the second-leading cause for young Latinos, the CDC reports. "Violent deaths seem to be something that is part of the black experience, and part of the Latino experience, too," he says.

If we're concerned about America's position in the global health rankings, González says, these are the groups we need to help most. "If we could do something about these terrible disadvantages, our life expectancy would go up," he says.

The power of stress

People living at the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum may be most affected by health inequalities, but poorer health doesn't exist only among the poor. "Just having money in your pockets doesn't make you healthier," says Adler.

The National Academies report noted that even Americans who are insured, college-educated, with higher incomes and healthy behaviors are worse off than similar groups in other countries.

What accounts for this difference? Richard Wilkinson, PhD, a social epidemiologist at the University of Nottingham Medical School, says it's the inequality itself. In decades of research, Wilkinson has shown that societies with greater inequality suffer more health and social problems. People in more egalitarian societies live longer, experience less violence, have lower rates of obesity and teen pregnancy, are less likely to use illicit drugs and enjoy better mental health than their counterparts in countries with a wide divide between rich and poor, he and his colleagues have found. And children in more equal societies score higher on the UNICEF Index of Child Wellbeing, which includes factors such as immunization rates, deaths from accidents, alcohol and tobacco use and educational success.

In America, the gap between the haves and have-nots is wide and getting wider. Since the 1970s, inequality has risen sharply. The richest 1 percent of Americans made 9 percent of the total pre-tax income in 1970, compared with 19.8 percent in 2011. "The U.S. is one of the most unequal of the rich, developed countries, and it suffers so many of the consequences," Wilkinson says.

Inequality seems to do its dirty work through the biology of chronic stress, says Wilkinson. Acute stress evolved for good reason - a racing heart and heightened alertness came in handy when our savannah ancestors wanted to avoid being eaten by a lion. But when the fight-or-flight feeling persists for hours or days, the immune system is down-regulated, tissue repair and growth slow down, and reproductive functions are put on hold. "All those things don't matter in an emergency, but you pay the cost if you go on feeling stressed for weeks and months and years," he says.

In unequal societies, he says, competition is fierce and we worry about our place in the pecking order. Often that translates to a constant, low-level anxiety. "We all become more twitchy about how we are seen and judged," he says, and social contact becomes increasingly trying. "People trust each other less and community life weakens. Inequality affects the whole social fabric."

Unfortunately, Americans are plenty familiar with stress, as APA's annual Stress in America survey shows. Last year, 20 percent of those surveyed reported experiencing extreme stress, and 35 percent of respondents said their stress increased in the past year. Just 37 percent of Americans feel they're doing a very good job managing their stress levels.

Closing the gap

What can be done to shrink America's health disadvantage? Top-down policy changes are an obvious way to enact broad change. "We got to this situation of inequality because of economic and social policies," Adler says. "So policies that could reduce inequality would in fact promote health."

Wilkinson believes such policies should aim to close the gap between the rich and the poor. "We've become more unequal because top incomes have run away from the rest of us," he says. One way to address the disparity is by increasing taxes for top incomes, but that's not the only way to do it, he adds. He also supports other measures that keep runaway incomes in check, such as establishing employee-owned companies and requiring employee representatives to sit on company boards. The latter practice is common in many European companies, he says, and helps close the salary gap between the people in the corner offices and those in the cubicles below.

Of course, the status quo is notoriously difficult to change. Many entrenched U.S. policies are in fact at odds with our well-being, Gallo says. Influential interest groups fight sex education in schools, block efforts at gun-control legislation and give the food industry power to market unhealthy foods. "In the U.S., there's strong political will to maintain an environment that will perpetuate these unhealthy behaviors," she says.

Put another way, says Adler, "If we wait for [broad public-policy change], we're going to have a lot of unnecessary suffering."

In the meantime, psychologists are well positioned to help individuals and communities get healthier. Notably, behavior plays a major role in nearly all of the nine health domains singled out by the National Academies report. "These are behavioral factors related to health, and these are things that can be changed," notes González.

One of the best places to focus efforts, many experts say, is early childhood. "Putting our resources on early life is probably the most important thing we can do because it has ramifications across the whole life course," says Adler, who's studying an intervention that involves stress management and mindfulness for low-income, overweight pregnant women. "Babies who are born to low-socioeconomic-status moms, from the moment of birth, are on more adverse trajectories," says Adler. Exposure to stress in utero seems to make them more reactive to stressors in older age. "Often you don't see the diseases until later in life, but the seeds may have been planted in childhood," she says.

Early education is another good target. Kids from families with fewer resources often start school a step behind, setting them on a negative path throughout their lives. Universal preschool may help them start out on a level playing field, Adler says.

Preschool is just a start. Our entire education system should improve, too, says Gallo. In general, people with better educations exhibit healthier behaviors and have better access to health care. But the United States is falling behind in the classroom. Compared with those in other nations, graduating U.S. students in 2011 ranked 17th for reading proficiency and 32nd for math (Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete? 2011). "We haven't kept pace," Gallo says.

Changes to the health-care system could also raise the grade on our national health report card. The U.S. health-care system is excellent for the elderly, Adler says. The report, Shorter Lives, Poorer Health, found that Americans have higher survival after age 75 than their contemporaries in other wealthy countries. The United States also has lower mortality from stroke and cancer, illnesses that disproportionately affect the elderly. But for younger Americans, the system is fragmented and not particularly focused on preventive care.

"We've put so much of our resources into high-tech, dramatic, end-of-life care, and less on primary care, prevention and early life," says Adler.

Raising awareness

Woolf says he and his colleagues on the National Academies panel went into the project with a goal of making recommendations for researchers. But they came away feeling a need to educate the general public as well. "Our sense was that most Americans are not aware of this problem," he says.

Gradually, though, people are getting the message. The financial crisis and the Occupy Movement, for example, demonstrate that "a growing minority of people is angered by these issues," Wilkinson says. "That's a start, but it will take a long time to put right."

Ultimately, Woolf and his colleagues hope their report will stimulate a national discussion about the state of our country's vigor.

"A lot of the problems that are responsible for the health disadvantage are difficult to address without some difficult choices," he says. "We need to make a decision about whether we want to just accept the health disadvantage, or to make some compromises so that our kids can live longer lives."

Kirsten Weir is a writer in Minneapolis.

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How long can you expect to keep blowing out the candles on your birthday cake? American men and women enjoy a life expectancy at birth of almost 76 and 81 years, respectively. That's not bad, globally speaking, but not as impressive as the life expectancy for Swiss men, at more than 79 years, or Japanese women, at almost 86.