Health Essay

Essay

This is maybe not what we think at first when we are newborn but, when we grow up we will think more about life expectancy. The life expectancy can define how long a baby can expect to live. This is also used as an indicator on health. But it’s cannot predict about the actual age of death of everyone, only how long the person can expect to live attributed to a number of factors. The factor can be living standard, improved lifestyle, education, health care or income…With the industrialization and the development,  some countries have seen their life expectancy rising. But as you can know some countries are not yet developed and not everyone in the world as the same living standard or lifestyle, that’s why there is a lot of inequality in chances of good health around the world. But with all this inequality, what kind of factor can increase and decrease the life expectancy of people? In a first step, I will talk about the genetic factor of inequality and then about the socio economic factor. These two factors are the two most famous indicator of the life expectancy.

 Actually, the biggest inequality in life expectancy is between genders. In fact the general factor that affects health in this place is genetic and biological factors. As you can know, male and female doesn’t have the same lifestyle and there is a repercussion on their life expectancy. For example female life expectancy are higher than male, in a lot of countries just like in France (Male: 79.4 Female: 85.4). And a lot of factors can explain this difference:

• The work: In this century, there is less discrimination in the world of work but still a lot of men tend to have more manual labour work than women.
• Nutrition : Now a lot of men are taking care of their body, but women have a better nutrition then men
• Lifestyle: This is maybe the biggest point who makes a difference between male and female. In fact both genders are drinking and smoking, but the heavy consumption of alcohol and cigarettes are still for the men.
• Health care : Women use to report more symptoms than male

The differing negative factor, tend to decrease the life expectancy of male that’s why there is a lot of inequality between the gender life expectancy. In this genetic biological factor we can also see some difference between ethnic groups. For example, health is not the same between African American people than European. But we will see that there is also another fact that is a main point of inequality in chances of good health around the world.

At first sight, you will maybe think this factor is not important, but this is really one of the general one. The difference between socio-economic groups is really important, like social group or income equality in the country. In many countries we can see « a sharp rise in income inequality during three decades»^[1]. Even in big country like United States or France, there is a big gap in the salary of different people and this is playing a part in the inequality of life expectancy. For example, there is now a lot of difference in the average pay of worker and jobless people in the same or different countries. And it is widely known that poorest people tend to have more factors of death prematurely. Because they will not have money to subscribe for health care, they will maybe live on the street or even in the shelter… And this factors decrease life expectancy, for a lot of years. Also, people in lower social group have a prevalence to smoke and drink a lot.  But we can also see a difference between some countries, because the poverty is not the same in Europe than in Africa. And in Africa, life expectancy is really low in comparison to others continent. That’s mean the socio-economic factor is really important, just like many others.

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