A slide from “How America Dies” (Bloomberg View)
How many to Alzheimer’s? How many to cancer? How many to AIDS? Matthew C. Klein over at Bloomberg View has put together an explainer on the topic, told through absorbing motion graphics.
Here are a few of the highlights of Klein’s “How Americans Die”:
• Since 1968, mortality rates have dropped across all age groups — a trend that’s most dramatic among the under-25 set.
• While Americans are living longer — one-third of people are 85 or over when they die — increased longevity means that they are more likely to suffer from dementia in their lifetime.
• Death from AIDS is a small fraction of what it was back in the mid-1990s, when the virus killed some 40,000 Americans a year.
• While 45- to 54-year-olds are much less likely to die from cancer or heart disease than they were back in 1968, they have become far more likely to commit suicide or die or from drugs.
• In fact, suicide is now the nation’s No. 1 violent cause of death.
And there’s plenty more to unpack, so I recommend checking out the feature in its entirety here.
