Tuesday, September 29, 2015

"Our Sick Society"

Paul Krugman's "Our Sick Society" was very interesting. He talks about how the poor health of Americans is correlated with our stressful lifestyle. He compares our health to the health of the English. A statistic that stood out to me was that the to me was that the "richest third in America is in worse health than the poorest third of the English". These numbers alone show how unhealthy our lifestyles are here in America. Last week we talked about how poor sleeping patterns are correlated to how stressful our jobs are because of how hard we work ourselves. Krugman suggests the same theory. He states that full time British workers work five weeks more per year than full time Americans. Although we cannot really say that sleep is the sole factor to why our health is significantly poorer, these statistics definitely suggest that it does play some sort of a role.

Paul Krugman, “Our Sick Society,” NYT, May 5, 2006 (http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/05/paul_krugman_ou.html)

2 comments:

  1. I think you got your total work weeks backwards... I believe the article stated that it was the Americans who worked almost 5 full weeks more than the British.

    That 5 week difference blew my mind at first! But when you break it down 5 full weeks is like 200 hours. Which is basically saying that Americans spend 1 extra hour at work every other day compared to the British.

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  2. Yes thanks for that correction! Statistics are so deceiving. What does keep this article mind blowing is the fact that this was written nearly ten years ago.

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