It has always been irritating for people struggling to survive in poverty to be hit with the moral platitudes by unfeeling people who are wealthier that you can’t buy happiness and money isn’t everything. It’s even more infuriating to hear similar platitudes from psychiatrists that it’s a sure sign of paranoia when poor people think they are being murdered by forces in society that won’t let them get ahead financially in life. Poverty does kill and any social forces which are keeping people down financially including psychiatric labels and intervention are killing them. This is not surprising since as the Citizens Commission on Human Rights often points out psychiatry is a destructive discipline.
The lifespan gap between the rich and poor is large and has been growing very quickly. Across the United States we see horrible deprivation associated with poverty in various areas of life including housing, education and employment. MIT researchers have observed that poor people also live shorter lives. The study revealed that in the United States the wealthiest 1 percent of men live 14.6 years longer on the average than the poorest 1 percent of men live. Among women the difference seen in those wealth percentiles is on the average 10.1 years.
The research paper titled “The Association between Income and Life Expectancy in the United States, 2001-2014” has been published today by the Journal of the American Medical Association. It has been observed higher incomes are associated with increased life expectancy. This lifespan gap has been growing quickly. Over about the last 15 years life expectancy was found to increase by 2.34 years for men and 2.91 years for women who are among the top 5 percent of income earners in the United States, but by just 0.32 and 0.04 years for men and women who are in the bottom 5 percent of the income stats.
Michael Stepner, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Department of Economics, says the fact poor people can on average anticipate to have 10 or 15 less years of life clearly demonstrates the level of inequality between rich and poor that exists in the United States. This is shocking and makes it clear people pushed into poverty and caught in poverty are justified in being frightened. It is no joke when charlatans in society such as psychiatrists cruelly and carelessly ruin people’s careers and financial well being with their damaging labels and destructive interventions. People really are being murdered by the poverty which is being created and enforced in such manners.
