Healthy Future US Blog

The New York Times  recently noted that popular economic statistics such as GDP and average wage growth are not capturing what is happening with many families.    In my view, we also need to regularly report net disposable income by class and quintile.  Net disposable income shows an even more accurate picture of why many working- and middle-class people are not “feeling the GDP growth love” personally.   The government (BLS) assembles the household wage & spending data needed to do this, but is not pulling it together and presenting it. Combining these shows long-term wage stagnation worsened considerably by higher health costs.  Not only are health costs hampering wage growth, as employees accept lower wage increases, in order to preserve their health benefits;  households are also using up those limited new wages in the form of higher deductibles & premiums.   ( See slides. )

Only 14% of US adults smoke now --compared to 42% just over 50 years ago. That's a 2/3 decline. Yet many of us think that we can't change Americans' unhealthy activity & nutrition habits. Why has smoking gone down so dramatically, while obesity & diabetes keep going up?  Well, we actually seriously tried, as a society & a political system, to reduce smoking.  We have not seriously tried to reverse obesity & diabetes. How did we reduce smoking so much?  Here is my grading of how poorly we are doing, at using strategies that worked against smoking--to fight inactivity & unhealthy nutrition: - Broad & profound awareness of seriousness of problem  (D) - Strong physical & health education programs in schools  (D) - Hard-hitting, pervasive public information campaigns  (F) - Very strong government health warnings  (D) - Large insurance premium discounts for healthy behavior  (D) - Cost-effective behavior cessation/adoption products/progra