People are getting poorer, their income is dropping, life expectancy is dropping and their health is getting worse.... there is no trickle down anywhere in Kensington".
We talk about our superior quality of life while we face more than a trillion dollars in student debt, stagnant wages, and dropping life expectancy.
The dropping life expectancies have helped weigh down the United States in international life expectancy rankings, particularly for women.
"Absent a war, genocide, pandemic, or massive governmental collapse, drops in life expectancy are rare," wrote Monica Potts in the American Prospect last month.
Four studies in recent years identified modest declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy for whites in this group.
Saint Onge also said that the biggest drops in life expectancy for women of all races are in rural Southern states with high rates of unemployment, disability, diabetes and smoking.
The drop in life expectancy is troubling, some experts said, because there had been an expectation that the measure would steadily go up in Western societies.
Researchers offered theories for the drop in life expectancy, but cautioned that none could fully explain it.
Professor Olshansky agreed that the group was now smaller, but said the magnitude of the drop in life expectancy was still a measure of deterioration.
Worse still is the drop in life expectancy when you cross the Avon from the touristy city centre to the southern neighbourhoods – between some areas the average life expectancy differs by almost a decade.
