Christopher Ingraham, writing in the Washington Post, points with alarm to a 20-year gap in life expectancies between the poorest and the richest Baltimoreans. This begs the question of whether that gap is too small or too large, or better yet, what the optimal gap would be. Surely it is not zero, which is to say that longevity is only one of the problems poor Baltimoreans face, that directing more resources to life extension means directing fewer resources elsewhere, and that redirecting enough resources to close a 20-year longevity gap would almost surely leave poor Baltimoreans worse off than they are. Even if we were prepared to spend whatever it takes to close that gap, it’s not implausible that most poor Baltimoreans would rather have the cash.
More striking is Ingraham’s observation, in the same article, that in some Baltimore neighborhoods, life expectancies are lower than they are in North Korea. Poor Baltimoreans are certainly wealthier than average North Koreans, so you’d expect them to live longer. Unless there’s some other variable at play (like, for example, a Korean genetic predisposition to long life), this suggests either that poor Baltimoreans die too young or that North Koreans live too long. It’s not clear which.
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