In the United States, the life expectancy of the average U.S. citizen reached a record high of 78.8 years in 2012, which good news for us. We’re living longer. But what are our most likely causes of death?
The Centers For Disease Control (CDC) has recently released numbers on the leading causes of death in 2013. The information on how age plays an interesting role in our death is nothing less than fascinating.
The graphic above, which runs at 5-year intervals, shows the shifts in the cause of death as we get older. Heart disease and cancer both handily take the lead as primary causes of death in the United States. However, the Mendoza Line reports that, despite those being the top causes of death, those numbers doesn’t necessarily transfer into public fear.
Despite the fact that cancer and heart diseases kill substantially more people than other diseases or causes, a Gallup poll from last year found that 17% of Americans thought the Ebola virus — which killed 2 people in the U.S. in 2014 — was the third “most urgent health problem facing this country at the present time.” Cancer and heart disease, on the other hand, polled at 10% and 2%, respectively.
Ebola swallowed up headlines in America for weeks last fall, despite the fact that only two Americans died from the disease.
Mendoza Line‘s David Mendoza makes the point that if we as a country want to deal with the real factors that affect the health of our nation, we should be focusing on numbers – rather than the hype playing out in the media.
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