Americans die younger than others in wealthy nations. What can we do about it?

A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that American life expectancy is the lowest it’s been in two decades at 76.4 years.

And Americans live shorter lives than people in other wealthy nations like Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. That’s across all demographic groups, meaning even the richest Americans live shorter lives than their counterparts in other countries. 

There are a lot of reasons for this, including poor diets, lack of access to health care, gun violence, car crashes and deaths from COVID-19. But there are also many potential solutions, some the United States could borrow from other countries.

Guests:

• Jeremy Ney is the author of American Inequality, a newsletter that uses data visualization to cover inequality in the United States. He was previously a macro policy strategist at the Federal Reserve. 

• Colin Planalp is a senior research fellow at State Health Access Data Assistance Center, which is a state health policy research center in the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. 

• Paul Mellick is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Health and Exercise Science at the University of St. Thomas.