Quick Follow-up to: US life expectancy has not kept pace with that of other wealthy countries and is now decreasing

I wanted to do a quick update and share a few of my findings on this topic. I compared US life expectancy to our peer countries. These countries or wealthy portions of countries (such as Hong Kong and Macao) in 1960 would have been considered "first world" or "industrialized." 

Comparison list of countries include:

1. Hong Kong SAR, China
2. Japan
3. Macao SAR, China
4. Switzerland
5. Spain
6. Italy
7. Singapore
8. Luxembourg
9. Korea, Rep.
10. Israel
11. France
12. Norway
13. Australia
14. Malta
15. Sweden
16. Canada
17. Iceland
18. Ireland
19. New Zealand
20. Austria
21. Netherlands
22. Belgium
23. Finland
24. Greece
25. United Kingdom
26. Portugal
27. Denmark
28. Germany
29. Puerto Rico
30. United States

I added Puerto Rico and South Korea (Republic of Korea) because Puerto Rico is part of the US but geographically, culturally and linguistically separate as well as significantly poorer and as such provides an interesting comparison. In 1960 South Korea would not have been considered to be a "first world country" but it has grown into one. It's transformation and what that has meant for the citizens of South Korea is interesting as well.

Here's what I found:

1. Since 1983, US life expectancy never again rose above the median. Before 1983, US life expectancy was generally above the median. 
2. In 2012 Puerto Rican life expectancy was higher than the US and has remained higher since.
3. Here's a table of life expectancy for Puerto Rico, US and the median life expectancy for the countries listed above from 2013 to 2017:

                                  

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Puerto Rico	79.03	79.20	79.35	79.49	79.63
United States	78.74	78.84	78.69	78.54	78.54
Group Median	81.75	81.92	81.96	82.24	82.28

Of the listed countries, the US ranks last and has ranked last since 2005. And not only that, US life expectancy has been declining -- at least during the last three years where we have records. I should mention that the country ordering shown above is from highest life expectancy to the lowest based on data collected in 2017.

Finally, if you graph the data, the first 28 countries fall into a fairly cohesive grouping, the Puerto Rico and the US clearly fall outside of that group into a lower grouping since 2011.

From a personal standpoint, the fact that US life expectancy in 2017 is a year lower than Puerto Rico and 3 3/4 year lower than the median is a stunning result. (The highest is over 84 years.)

More to follow on this topic.