When a child dies at the age of two this greatly impacts the statistic of “life expectancy” (On a far end of the bell curve). Children have a much higher mortality rate than adults (drowning, electrocution, cars, bicycles, falling from trees/ladder, ingestion of chemicals/poisoning....etc). Nearly all of Europe has a much lower birthrate and this affects the life expectancy statistic. A nation like Germany with only 1.38 children per woman is going to have fewer children than the US where the average woman has 2.1 children per woman. But who cares about minor details like this?
For example, maybe our life expectancy is lower because we have more obese people? Maybe it’s lower because less people are physically active, because of certain dietary factors, maybe even genetic, or maybe it’s environmental or even related to more crime, more deaths in wars..... He focuses in on one aspect, since it’s the crux of his new work of fiction.
Michael, maybe there just isn’t as many super-sized slobs like you over there and that’s why their life expectancy is higher?
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/mar2005/nia-16.htm
In fact Michael, a fat shmuck like you is significantly reducing their life expectancy with their weight.
Just for fun, you should visit this site and add in your weight: http://www.deathclock.com
The statistic is accurate I’m sure that we do indeed have a slightly lower life expectancy than “some” European nations by a small margin. The problem is determining what the real cause is. In all reality if one were to really do some analysis of correlation it will most likely boil down to the fact that we have more fat people like you Michael, and more children, which tend to die more frequently and these things push the statistic down.