Jobs Kill
[A] poor, badly-schooled, unmarried urban black male dies 17.7 times as often as a rich, well-educated, married, rural Asian woman (of the same age), with a lifespan roughly thirty years shorter on average. (A risk ratio of 1.57 costs roughly five years of life.)
Yet big as this effect is, the top five job factor risk ratios give a total ratio of 19.7, bigger than all the other non-age effects put together! And the top ten job factor ratios give a total risk ratio of over 100! (All twenty six factors together give a total risk ratio of 563.) Jobs are clearly a huge and neglected influence on who lives and who dies.
If you cared about preventing death, rather than just signaling your concern, these results suggest you stop wasting your efforts on tiny effects like medical insurance, auto accidents, crime, recreational drugs, radiation, or food safety, and focus on: jobs
Entire post by Robin Hanson is worth reading.
Interesting post.
This is similar to the Tammy Tengs / John Graham study (1995) that looked at lifesaving medical and regulatory interventions. It found the cost per life year saved associated with different interventions varies tremendously. It would be prudent to go after the low-hanging fruit first.
Just eyeballing it, it looks like where you work is a lot more important than what health care you get.
Bruce is making a very interesting observation.
Where do think tanks fall on the job risk scale?
I’d bet this is measuring the effect of differences in group homicide rates. There are big differences between young black males and everyone else–especially aged 15-35.