America’s life expectancy is not 50 years old.
Neither is Japan’s at age 53.
I don’t know where they’re getting their numbers, but it smells like it came from a bull’s manure pile.
According to Wikipedia (not very accurate, but they refer to sources for this):
Japan’s life expectancy is 82 years, *NOT* 53 as claimed in this article.
Likewise, America’s life expectancy is 78 years, *NOT* the 50 previously claimed.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
You’re reading it wrong. Look again.
The article is NOT saying that life expectancy is 50 in the USA. It’s talking about the life expectancy that a person can have after they reach 50.
This is a statistic that factors out all causes of death prior to age 50 so that it’s a measure of actual longevity rather than a figure that is distorted by infant mortality and other early-life causes of death.