“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” – Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
I’ve long thought it would be handy if, on the day we were born, we were given a sealed envelope containing the date of our death.
That way, when we got to the stage of life I’m at now (gray hair, skin tags, grandkids, 25-year Penn State rocking chair, etc.), we could unseal the envelope and start figuring out how much we can spend before our money runs out and whether, if we have our heart set on riding a camel or swimming with sea turtles (or riding a sea turtle and swimming with camels), we’d better get a move on.
Knowing the exact date of my demise would also ensure that I would not spend my last sentient hours grading papers or pulling slimy hair out of a clogged drain, to name two closely related activities.
Along comes a Washington Post story on “America’s Life Expectancy Crisis.” Overall thesis: We Americans don’t live as long as our counterparts in other “advanced” countries. Blame “inadequate insurance, minimal preventive care, bad diets and a weak economic safety net.”
As a result of these factors we are “a nation beset with chronic illness and saddled with a fractured health-care system that, compared with its peers, costs more, delivers less and fails at the fundamental mission of helping people maintain their health.”
Average life expectancy in the U.S., according to the Post: 76.8 years, down from a peak of 78.9 years in 2014. In Norway, the land of happy stats, the average lifespan is 83 years.
Life expectancy, as one might expect, not only varies from country to country, but from state to state. Plug in your age, gender and state – but not your income, fitness level, diet, medical history, among other variables — in the Post’s handy-dandy life expectancy calculator and you’ll see how many more World Series you’ll be able to watch before you shuffle off to that great ballpark in the sky.
Select a different state — particularly useful for someone like me, who, in idle moments, ponders whether to remain in State College when I retire from teaching or go become a burden to my out-of-state children — and you’ll be able to tell whether relocating will add to or subtract from your allotment of years.
If I stay in PA, the Post tells me, I’ll stick around for 13 more years. (I was hoping the story would drill down to the county level, the way some of the COVID coverage did a couple of years back, so I could see how Centre County compares to elsewhere in the Commonwealth, but state-by-state was as fine-grained as the reporting got.)
Pennsylvania is just below the middle of the American pack (29 out of 50, to be exact). Number 1 is Hawaii. If I move there, I’m good for another 15 years. That’s a lot of luaus. Contrariwise, if I relo to dead-last Mississippi, I’m down to 11 more orbits around the sun.
But if I’m really keen to extend my stay on this lovely, pale blue dot we call home, I’ll move overseas. Best bet would be Japan, where I’d hang on another 16 years and three months. Norway’s just a click behind, at 16 years on the nose, followed by Iceland and Singapore.
Where I don’t want to go if I want to cling to my one wild and precious life: Kyrgyzstan. With all respect to the good people of that former Soviet Socialist Republic, my prospects there can be turned into a good news/bad news joke:
The bad news: You’re moving to Kyrgyzstan. The good news: You’ll be dead in five years.
Barring a Trump restoration, I’ll not be moving to any foreign land because my peeps are here in the USA: kids, grandkids, friends, the New York Yankees, a news organization that lets me natter about whatever’s on my mind from one week to the next.
So where? Hawaii’s too far from everyone I care about, but the other states that round out the top five are all places I could imagine moving to: Vermont and Washington (1.3 more years than Pennsylvania); California and Oregon (an extra 1.2 years). Every one of those states puts us closer to at least one of our far-flung children. Three of the four offer ocean beaches, which I’m keen on (the worst thing about State College is its distance from a coast).
Then there’s New York, where I was born and raised. Decamping for the Empire State would buy me 30 more days of life, which may not sound like much in the scheme of things. But I look at it this way: That’s 30 more pastrami sandwiches than I’d be able eat if I stay in the Keystone State.
Of course, a daily dose of cured beef might finish me off before I got to the end of that extra month.
